


Stannis the Black Stag

by IronT



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Canon Divergence - Robert's Rebellion, Elia Martell Lives, F/M, For Want of a Nail, Gen, Robert's Rebellion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 04:41:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronT/pseuds/IronT
Summary: A different take on the Siege of Storm's End, heavily inspired by the history of the Hundred Years War and the reign of Henry V. It may turn into a multi chapter piece, it may not, I'm not sure.
Relationships: Robert Baratheon & Stannis Baratheon, Stannis Baratheon & Davos Seaworth, Stannis Baratheon/Elia Martell
Comments: 138
Kudos: 247





	1. The Bloody Field

_In all fairness to the Reacher lords, it must be said that I had not expected to survive the day. Five thousand starving men had no right to defeat in their totality a host of the size Mace Tyrell brought to the field, no matter how poorly he led it. What we did at Storm’s End was by all rights a miracle of soldiering. My men, not I, deserve the accolades for that bloody victory. What those men did was the greatest act of heroism I have ever seen, and the finest service a bannerman has ever offered his liege lord. To them, I am eternally grateful._

**Stannis Baratheon, the Black Stag, on his victory over the Tyrell host at Storm’s End.**

Stannis

Renly was crying again. He was hungry, and he wanted lemon cakes. The little boy’s crying could be heard across the walls of Storm’s End, a piteous, desperate, awful wailing. Renly didn’t understand why he couldn’t go outside. He didn’t understand why there was not enough food. He wanted to eat and he wanted to play outside with his pony, and why had his mean brother taken his pony away?

Stannis hated the wailing. He ground his teeth until his jaw ached and he hated the little boy for crying. He knew he should not begrudge Renly. The boy was not yet ten, and did not understand. But damn him anyway. Every time Renly cried, every time he begged for food, Stannis watched his sentries sag a little bit more. Every time Renly threw a fit, Stannis watched the will ebb from his men a little more.

The damnable feasting was not helping either. The bastard Mace Tyrell had set a great table upon a hilltop in full view of the men on the walls. Great field kitchens roared day and night, wafting clouds of smoke smelling of prime meat and other delicacies to Stannis’ haggard garrison.

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends. Damn Robert for leaving me here. And damn Renly for crying._

The food was gone. As of this morning, when Stannis and Ser Wylde had walked the walls in the pouring rain to dispense the rations to the men, the food was gone. Horse meat, cooked rats, grain and wood shavings made into tacky bread, and it was gone. There would be no more food for the garrison, and the real dying would begin soon. Stannis had forgone his meal today, giving it up to spread a small portion more of meat amongst his men. They’d seen him do it, some of them, and the story had whipped through the garrison within hours. When he’d walked the walls to dispense the last of their food, the men had thanked him with shaking hands and teary eyes. The blacksmith, Donal, once so big and strong, now thinner than a yew sapling, had pulled Stannis to him and wept like a child into his shoulder.

“They love you, my lord.” Ser Wylde had murmured to him, seeing Stannis’ expression. “For your generosity to them.”

“We will all starve together.” Stannis replied. “It is not right, I should have more than they. A peasant starves the same as a lord.”

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends. Damn Robert for leaving me here. And damn Renly for crying._

A few days before, a small ship had braved the rocks of Shipbreaker Bay to reach the castle. A smuggler, leather faced and worn by the sea, had brought what little he could to the garrison. He had brought onions and a few strips of leathery jerky. The man, Davos Seaworth, had gazed miserably at Stannis’ men as they unloaded his little boat, and apologized again and again to Stannis for not bringing more. To Stannis, it had seemed a cornucopia. He had thanked the smuggler, and sent him back to bring more food. The man had sworn to return, and he’d kept his word.

“Nothing left to bring my lord.” He said, eyes fixed on the wood slats of the pier, not looking at Stannis. “The Reachmen are burning farms and carting away provisions. They drive the smallfolk away from their fields and….”

Stannis had held up one hand. “Enough.” He said. ‘You say there is no more, there is no more. You have done all you could.”

Seaworth shifted uncomfortably. “I should have done more my lord.”

Stannis shook his head. “You did enough.”

Above them, from his tower, Renly was crying again.

Damn Renly for crying.

Seaworth stepped forwards, his face uncertain. “I could….”

Stannis looked at him. “You could what?”

“I could take the boy. To the riverlands, to your elder brother. It would spare him having to....”

“Having to starve to death?”

The smuggler shuddered. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you meant it.” Stannis said flatly. “I prefer men say what they mean.”

He stood silently, for a long moment, staring up at Renly’s tower. The food was gone. There would be no more. And Renly was not sturdy.

“Take him.” He said at last. “Him, and make sure to take his kitten as well.”

Seaworth nodded, and then paused. “A cat?”

“My brother,” Stannis felt something, and he did not much care for that something, well up in his throat. “He has a kitten he keeps hidden in his chambers, and feeds pieces of rats. It’s a small thing but he did not want to part with it, and I could not bring myself to kill it. Take it with you.”

His voice did not crack, and he was grateful that only he and the smuggler stood together on the pier to not hear it.

“I will.” Seaworth promised. “The boy will be safe, and his cat. I swear on the Seven.”

He had touched Stannis then, a firm hand on Stannis’ bony shoulder. It was improper, impudent even. A bizarre act of kindness and familiarity from a man Stannis had promised to take a hand from for the crime of smuggling. But Stannis did not pull away.

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends. Damn Robert for leaving me here._

The skies poured rain when they bundled Renly and his little cat onboard Seaworth’s cog and the little boy wept miserably as he was led aboard.

“I don’t want to go!” He’d cried. “I won’t!”

Stannis had knelt before his little brother. Around them, Stannis’ knights stood silent, gaunt statues in their armor and mail.

“You are Renly of Storm’s End.” Stannis had said. “You do not cry. There is nothing to cry over.”

“Yes there is.” Renly sobbed, a great hacking gasp that made his little body shake like a leaf. “I’m never going to see you again!”

Behind them, Stannis heard one of his knights choke back something that sounded awfully like a sob. Another turned away.

“Renly, look at me.” Stannis took his brother’s chin in his hand. “Look at me.”

Renly sniffled, and wiped at his face with his sleeve. In his cloak, Stannis heard a small mewling. A small gray black face peaked out at him, bright eyed.

“Have you named your cat?” Stannis asked.

“N..no.” Renly said. “I thought you’d take him away and I….”

“You kept him fed, didn’t you?”

Renly nodded.

“You shared your rations with your garrison like a good soldier, didn’t you?”

Renly nodded again. He was still teary eyed, but he wasn’t sobbing.

“He’s your responsibility.” Stannis said. “I expect to see him in fine health when I see you again. Do you hear me?”

Renly nodded, firmly now.

“Go on.”

Stannis’ little brother shuffled away down the pier to the smuggler’s ship.

“I’m going to call him Stannis.” Renly said as he climbed aboard. “I’m going to call him Stannis and I’m going to see you again.”

Stannis watched, standing amongst his knights, as the little ship sailed away. He didn’t weep. And in the deluge, none amongst his knights could tell.

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends. Damn Robert for leaving me here._

“The Stranger take Tyrell!” Ser Wylde snarled.

“His whole House, damn them!” Lord Eldon of Estermont spat. His eldest son, Aemon, prowled behind his father like a raging tomcat.

The castle’s knights sat around a bonfire in the castle yard, beneath a high stone archway that connected the walls to the upper keep. It was still pouring rain, and lightning made its wicked, arcing journey across the night sky, but the garrison had pulled what wood they could together and built a roaring fire in the shelter of the arch. Common men and lords sat together, wrapped in their cloaks, huddled close to the flames to stave off the cold.

On the hill beyond the walls, the Tyrells were still feasting.

“Bastards the lot of them.” A common man, an archer, sneered. Rather than stamp on the man for impudence, the knights beside him growled their assent. “Tain’t a proper way to beat a man, starvin him.”

“No it’s not.” Ser Wylde agreed. “It’s a damn ignoble way to fight.”  
There were more chorusing growls and furious agreements.

“It's unheard of.” Old Maester Cressen, frail and weak before they had begun to starve, could barely walk. “It's inhuman.”

“I don’t want to die like this.” Another man, a squire in the livery of House Morrigen murmured quietly. “I don’t.”

An ugly anger rippled across the assembled, shivering men.

“What do you want then, boy?” Lord Estermont asked, his voice icy.

“He doesn’t want to starve.” Stannis cut in. The mood amongst the men was ugly, and fighting was the last thing he needed. “None of us do.”

Estermont rounded on Stannis then. “Then what shall we do my lord? We cannot surrender!”

Around him, men rumbled in assent.

“We cannot surrender now, not after so long. Not after what the bastard has done to us. I could not bear the shame of it. I won’t bear the shame of it!”

Thunder rumbled above them. The rain continued to pour down.

Men huddled closer to the fire, slipping and struggling in the mud of the yard to get under the shelter of the arch, or of the balustrades of the walls and out of the rain. Stannis watched them and thought. Lord Estermont continued to yell, not at Stannis but at anything and everything, at Tyrell for starving them, at the Mad King Aerys for starting it all, at Robert for leaving them. Other men joined in, howling their grievances to the sky in hopeless frustration.

Estermont’s son, Aemon, overcome, drew his sword and stamped out into the rain. The young knight howled curses over the walls, cursing the Tyrells for cowards and demanding they kill him with blades were they to take his life at all. Such was his fury, that the young knight quickly lost his footing in the mud and fell flat onto his back. In his armor, the mud was like tar, and it took seven men to free him.

Stannis stood. Estermont stopped his roaring. Men looked at Stannis. They were, to a man, thin as rails. Gaunt of face, and so, so damnably tired.

“I won’t die in this hole like a rat.” Stannis said. “I won’t do it. Not for a man like Mace Tyrell. We are outnumbered, and we are without rationing. A day more, a week, and our strength is spent. They will have to break our gates down for we shall be too weak to open them.”

There was angry murmuring at this. Stannis raised a hand to stop his men from speaking.

“I will not do it. I will not let Mace Tyrell have this castle without lifting a sword in the taking of it. If he wants my home, he can come take it from me in the field.”

Stannis began slowly to pace around the fire. “At dawn, I am marching out into that field.” He said. “ I am going to gird myself in my plate, I am going to take up my sword, and I am going to make Mace Tyrell spend blood to take this castle.”

Around him, men were standing. Beyond the firelight, men huddled forwards to listen.

“I ask no man of you to come with me.” Stannis said. “When I throw open my gates, any man who wishes may depart, and departs with my heartfelt thanks for his honorable service. Maester!”

Cressen looked up. “My lord?”

“All men of the garrison to be paid from the castle treasury in full for their service, tonight. No man shall tomorrow be unpaid. Is that understood?”

“Yes my lord.” Cressen nodded.

Angry cries went up, but Stannis shouted over them. “Any man who wishes to come with me, is sorely welcome. I cannot promise victory, I cannot promise an honorable defeat. The Tyrells have the numbers, and they are well fed and well rested. They’ve spent these past months sleeping in their feather beds and gorging themselves on vittles like pigs. But this is our land, our castle, and there is an anger in me tonight that could tear down the heavens themselves had I a company of men brave enough for the undertaking.”

“You have one, my lord!” Ser Wylde was on his feet. The knight’s brown eyes gleamed in the firelight. “I will go!”

“And I!” the castle’s blacksmith, Donal stepped forwards. “I’ve been smithing for your family for years. I made you that sword.” The smith pointed. “I won’t leave you to swing it alone.”

“You’ll go nowhere without me, my lord!” Estermont strode forwards and took Stannis by the shoulder. “Old Estermont can stand his ground as well as any Baratheon.”

“Too right.” Aemon was at his father’s shoulder.

All around him, the garrison was on their feet. Men Stannis had met only days before the siege began were swearing to stand and fight alongside him. Men swore oaths to him, with bright, angry eyes. They stood taller, straighter, stronger.

“We march out at dawn, as the fog rolls in.” Stannis said. “Two in every three men is to bear a longbow. Lord Estermont, I give them to you to command. Form them as wings on either flank. The rest of you, stand in the centre beside me. We shall be the anchor of the line, and the point where the Tyrell knights will make their charge. My lords, should I fall, Ser Wylde has the castle.”

Stannis was striding now, mouth half open in a rictus of furious energy. “The Tyrell host is vast, but it wears plate. It has no small folk, it raised no levies before it marched here. It’s commander does not know Stormland rain, and he does not know Stormland mud. We will bring them down onto our line, into the mud, and we will hold them in it until they choke on the dirt of our land.”

Energy rippled through the men, through Stannis’ knights, through him. It would work. It had to work.

“There are no finer men in all the seven kingdoms than gathered here tonight!” Stannis was yelling now, his voice strong and clear. “There has never been men finer in all the ages, in all the battles of the world. I am honored to share this field with you, great men, my brothers in arms. At the morrow, those of us yet among the living, shall henceforth be brothers and ever sworn to be so!”

There was water on his face, and Stannis was sure it was the rain.

“Lord Estermont!” He cried. “Are you my brother?”

The old knight was weeping. Tears poured down his smiling face. “I am, my lord.”

“And you, Wylde?”

“Until the Stranger takes me, my lord!”

“And you Donal?” Stannis asked.

The smith was shaking with emotion. “Now and always my lord. Your brother and your loyal man!”

Cries of brotherhood went up amongst the garrison, a thunder of voices that reverberated around the walls of the keep, over the thunder and the rain. In the tumult, Stannis fancied he could hear the music and the feasting on the hilltop waver and stop.

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends. Damn Robert for leaving me here. Gods bless these men, for there are no men finer in all the world._

Stannis led the garrison onto the field under the cover of heavy sea fog. The men moved quickly, and in silence. Three thousand men at arms, armed with spears, bill hooks, poleaxes and halberds, swords, axes and maces, formed a solid block before the gates of Storm’s End three hundred men wide, ten men deep. Two loose lines of archers formed up on either side of this block, under the watchful eyes of Estermont and his son. Storm’s End’s armory was empty. Armor that had not been worn in generations was handed out to be worn by any man able to fit the plate. Peasants bore swords meant for knightly hands. Every archer carried a long hunting bow, and a quiver of a hundred arrows, stuck into the mud at their feet. Cressen, although too weak to walk, sat in a little cart behind the line and organized the castle’s servants to ready what extra arms remained and to run arrows from the stores to the lines of archers.

The men drove stakes into the mud before their positions. The wood came from shattered doors, broken bannisters, even the high backed wooden chair of Stannis’ father had been broken up and shattered to make defense for the line. Robert will be furious with me for that. Stannis had thought. The idea made him happy.

Their positions occupied, their arms readied, the garrison stood in the fog, and waited.

By mid morning, the fog had begun to clear, and so too had Mace Tyrell's vision of Storm’s End. A knight, unarmored save for his blue tabard and shield, rode down the long valley from the Tyrell camp to Stannis’ position at the center of the Baratheon line. Six golden suns on a blue field made up the knight’s heraldry, and his bare face was full and warm.

“Stannis Baratheon!” The knight cried, parading his horse up and down the line of men, its blue coat dancing in the morning light, small trails of remnant mist worming around its hooves. “Have you come out to surrender?”

“Damn surrender!” A man in the line called out.

“To any man who here now throws down his arms!” The knight stood in his saddle. “The merciful lord, Mace Tyrell of Highgarden promises safe conduct and a full meal from his own table! No man shall be harmed who now surrenders!”

Stannis stepped forwards. “Tell your fat pig of a lord that Stannis Baratheon shall feed his men on Mace Tyrell’s baggage train!”

A cry went up amongst the garrison. From somewhere, the night before, Ser Wylde had found a tapestry of the Baratheon heraldry. He’d affixed it to a long pole, and this he raised above the line so that the black stag fluttered in the breeze.

The knight rode his horse forwards so that he and Stannis were within easy speaking distance.

“Please my lord.” The knight said, an earnestness in his voice. “Do not do this. Surrender and Lord Tyrell will be merciful. You have done more than any man could have done in the circumstances. Spare your men a slaughter.”

Stannis patted the knight’s horse on the broad side of its neck. The horse whinnied softly.

“When this is over, come again, and you and I will speak.” He said. “Then we may discuss surrender. But not now.”

The knight looked down at him. His golden curls fluttered into his face, and the young knight pushed them away. He looked at Stannis clear into his eyes.

“You are perhaps the bravest man I have ever met, my lord.”

Stannis grunted, noncommittal. “What is your name, ser?”

“Branston Cuy of Sunflower Hall, my lord.” The knight replied.

“Tell your lord and master to come on then, Branston Cuy of Sunflower Hall.” Stannis said. “Stannis Baratheon is waiting for him.”

The knight saluted, and rode away, back to the Tyrell camp.

Stannis strode back to his position beside Ser Wylde.

“Where did you get that damned thing, ser?” He asked.

The castellan grinned. “Pulled it from your brother’s room, my lord. Supposed it would make better service here than adorning his chambers.”

“It will make a fine target for the Tyrell cavalry.” Stannis replied.

“That it will.” Wylde agreed. “And I thought that to be the point.”

Beyond them, Stannis watched as a line of cavalry formed. Knights in livery all the colors of a garden in full bloom, the riotous pride of Highgarden and all the Houses of the Reach, in the panoply of war, formed up to charge down upon him and his tiny band.

“How many of them do you think there are?” A knight in the brown of House Penrose asked.

“Fifteen, mayhap twenty thousand?” Another knight, in Toyne black and yellow replied. “The whole knightly host of the Reach come to dance.”

“Would there were ten thousand more!” Ser Wylde roared, to general laughter. Beyond, the Tyrell line began to canter forwards.

“Now!” Stannis called out. “Great men! Now!”

The first wave of Tyrell knights began their charge.

Mace Tyrell might not have been a general of any quality whatsoever, but it had to be credited that the fat bastard knew how to count. In his first foray, he committed five thousand knights against the Baratheon line. The knights thundered forwards, their horses churning up mud and filth with their hooves, propelling their riders towards the host of foot before the castle gates. As they charged, something curious began to happen. So sodden was the ground after weeks and weeks of torrential downpour, that it had turned from solid field into a sea of mud. To maintain their speed, and the velocity of their charge, the knights guided their mounts up onto the hard packed King’s Road that ran to the castle gate. Confined as they were to the road itself, the head of the charge narrowed to some fifty men riding knee to knee towards the Baratheon line, and the fluttering stag at its center.

Half way down the valley, two hundred yards from the Baratheon line, Stannis Baratheon gave the order to signal Estermont and his archers. At a hundred and fifty yards, the bows began to loose arrows into the flanks of the charging knights.

Horses went down in an instant, screaming and flailing. Men were kicked by pain maddened horses and fell dead. Others were pulled down and crushed by their own mounts and the horses coming on behind. Such was the angle of the archers in relation to the charging formation of knights that the arrow storm lashed up and down the line of knights, flaying the formation in a hail of murderous arrow shafts. The first wedge, those some fifty knights leading the charge attempted to veer off, charge past the face of the waiting Baratheon men at arms and into the archers. But became bogged down and trapped in the mud. A sortie of men at arms, under Ser Lester Morrigen rushed out from the line and dragged the Reachmen from their horses, butchering them daggers. After what may have been only minutes but seemed to stretch on for an age, the host turned, and rode back the way it had come, leaving a field of dead and wounded in its wake.

“Hold fire!” Stannis shouted, and beside him Wylde waved the Baratheon banner aloft. The arrow fire petered out. “Let them withdraw.” He turned and spoke to Wylde. “A runner to Estermont and Aemon. Arrows to be loosed only when the enemy is in range. I’ll not waste arrows we need on men we cannot hit.”

Wylde nodded.

“And here they come again my lord.” He said.

The castellan was right. At the head of the valley, the Tyrell’s were reforming. There was some confusion as withdrawing men intermingled with the fresh line, and some men swapped horses for a second charge. A knight in green livery rode up and down the line of knights, a banner of roses held aloft, clearly shouting some words of encouragement. From the Tyrell camp, a bright, clarion horn rang out, and the second line of knights began their advance.

This line held its charge, walking itself down the valley before stopping three hundred yards from the Baratheon line. Then, after a long moment, the horn sounded again, and the knights spurred their horses into the charge.

At a hundred and fifty paces, Lord Estermont loosed his arrows and the knights of the Reach began to die again. They had walked so close to the Baratheon line, in the hope that they could ride through the mud into the archers at such a close distance. It almost worked. The knights made it within fifty feet of the defensive stakes on their horses before being driven back by the hail of arrow fire. Some men dismounted and charged afoot into the line, pushing their way past the forest of stakes to get at the Baratheon footmen. Some four hundred men, dismounted or having had their horses shot out from under them, charged the very center of the Baratheon line on foot, hacking their way through the stakes and arrow fire to strike at Stannis and his banner.

It very nearly worked. A young knight, Jerrol Fossoway, his yellow tabard torn half away, the red apple on his shield marred with mud, killed three men before crossing swords with Stannis. In a quick melee, Stannis disarmed him and gave him a savage blow to the elbow that took away his arm. The knight surrendered, but before Stannis could accept, a blood mad foot man dashed the knight’s head in with a mace. The remaining knights who charged with Fossoway surrendered in short order. As the men escorted the beaten knights to the rear, a third clarion call rang through the valley. Even before the second wave had fully withdrawn, Tyrell was sending in the full rest of his host. Men on foot this time, without their horses.

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends._

The fat oaf was learning. Without the horses, the knights were far less vulnerable to the disorder wrought by the arrow storm.

“This is it then.” A knight in Morrigen colors said, as he pushed a mud and blood drenched Tyrell knight past him. “This will decide it.”

“We’ll need every man, my lord.” Wylde muttered into Stannis’ ear. “What do we do with these prisoners?”

Stannis ground his teeth. His face was blood streaked, and his mouth tasted of copper. His chest heaved. Sweat was pouring down his face, just as surely as it was for every man in his host. They had not the strength to guard prisoners and fight.

“Kill them.” He said. “No prisoners till this is over.”

Some few paces behind Stannis, a Tyrell knight cried out in horror as he heard Stannis’ words.

“Kill your prisoners!” Wylde bellowed. “Kill your prisoners!”

_Damn Tyrell. Damn him, damn his family, damn his friends._

  
The third assault would be Lord Tyrell’s last. He had spent twelve thousand men slain or wounded in the valley in his first two assaults, and now he would commit the entire rest of his reserves. Fifteen thousand men marched into the valley. They were armored in full plate, equipped with the finest arms and trained in the highest arts of knightly combat. Men from all the greatest Houses of the Reach advanced under a white silk banner emblazoned with roses. From their camp to the Baratheon line, the advance took fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes of slogging through knee high mud under arrow fire. Of the men who made it to the Baratheon line, perhaps only two thousand were unwounded. Stannis led his men out of their defensive position behind the stakes in a swift, rushing charge into the struggling Reachmen at fifty paces. Hampered by the mud and the wounded and slain men and horses all around them, the Reach knights did not form a battle line in time, and were bowled over into the mud or pulled down and massacred by the battle mad Stormlanders.

Lord Estermont, his arrow reserves blown full through, led a charge, mirrored on the opposite flank by his son, into the sides of the Tyrell knights. Unarmored archers brought down knights with tackles and rammed daggers under their helmets or up into their groin, or else beat them around the head with hammers and clubs. Donal Noye, the blacksmith, lost his arm to a knight in a red surcoat, and returned the favor by beating the man’s head in with a smithing hammer. Stannis, his sword trapped beneath a dead knight, took up a poleaxe from a slain footman, and dispatched seven men before taking a blow to the face with the point of a halberd that opened up his right cheek and left him staggering. Ser Wylde, banner still in hand, rushed forwards with a band of hastily chosen men to defend Stannis, and the brave castellan died in the undertaking, speared through the heart. Even in death, Wylde kept the banner aloft, resting it against his body so that it would not fall. His killer, a Hightower knight, tried to wrest the standard from Wylde’s body, but was cut down by Stannis and a pair of men at arms with billhooks.

After thirty minutes of desperate, bloody fighting, a retreat sounded from the head of the valley. A long, plaintive note echoed out over the struggling mass of men. Tyrell knights turned and attempted to withdraw up the valley. So caught up were they in the mud and gore of the battlefield however, that they made terribly slow pace, and a fearful many were dragged down and killed or taken as prisoners by the Baratheons. It took a full hour for the maimed and mangled men of the Reach to return to their lines, and of the fifteen thousand who marched into the valley, scarce twelve hundred returned to their camp.

The Baratheon host held its positions at the gates of Storm’s End through the morning and into the afternoon. Two thousand Reachmen had been captured or had surrendered and offered their parole. These men Stannis did not order slaughtered. He could have, and several of his knights questioned the choice not to, but he could not bring himself to do it. The Tyrell host had made no sign of intending to advance after its third failed assault, and he could not bring himself in good conscience to slaughter men without true tactical imperative. The prisoners were stripped of their arms and armor, and bound, watched over by Ser Lyle of House Morrigen, who had killed two men with his bare hands after losing his sword.

As mid day turned into evening, a small band of unarmored knights rode down into the valley towards the Baratheon line. At their head rode Ser Branston Cuy, a bloody bandage wrapped around his head, the muddy and tattered remains of the Tyrell standard fluttering overhead. Behind him rode six knights of House Tyrell, all equally bloodied and worn through to exhaustion.

Stannis met them a few steps before his battered front line. Such was the knot of bloodied bodies before the line, the Reach knights had to dismount and climb, slowly and arduously up to speak to him.

“My lord.” Ser Branston bowed his head. “I have come to talk of surrender.”

Stannis said nothing, only nodded. Behind him, Lord Estermont and his son strode out of the host to stand beside him. Estermont had lost an eye to a sword stroke, and was being tended by a nurse and Maester Cressen, who was in turn supported by two foot men.

“My lord…” Branston began, and then stopped. He did not seem able to find the words.

“I have taken six hundred men killed and wounded. Of them, twenty of them of noble stock.” Stannis said. “I have some two thousand of your men paroled as prisoners”

Ser Branston was very quiet.

“We’ve yet to complete our count of the slain my lord.” The knight said. “But your host has killed no less than six thousand men. Of our wounded, there is not a man unhurt save for Lord Tyrell.”

Behind Stannis, Aemon Estermont snorted. “Doesn’t fight his own battles, does he, the fat flower.”

Stannis waved a hand to silence him, but Ser Branston nodded sadly. “No ser, Lord Tyrell does not.”

He stepped forwards and held out a gold encrusted sword. “The Lord Tyrell’s sword, my lord. We surrender. We are at your mercy.”

Stannis took the blade. The Tyrell motto was engraved across the blade edge. He wedged the point into a joint in a slain man’s plate and stamped hard with one foot on the flat of the blade. It snapped with a loud twang. The Reachmen, including Branston, winced. Stannis handed the broken sword back, hilt first.

“Return this to Lord Tyrell, and then escort him down here. Your camp is mine, your baggage train is mine. All persons within your camp are my prisoners. Any man taking from the train without permission will be hanged. I will offer ransoms to the Houses of those men I have here taken prisoner. All men captured will be offered fair treatment and fair terms for their release. I shall make provision for the return of Lord Tyrell when I have occasion to speak with him.”

Branston bowed his head again. “You are merciful, my lord. You have our gratitude. You have won a victory that will be spoken of for generations.”

“Do not thank me.” Stannis said. “Else I may regret it. And give no praise to me, Ser Branston. It was my men, won the victory. Not I.”

Stannis turned away from the Reachmen and marched back to his army. His men cheered him and met him with eager handshakes and slaps across the back. Above them, the makeshift Baratheon banner fluttered in the breeze.

_Gods bless these men, for there are no men finer in all the world._


	2. Ransoms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote more. It still remains to be seen how long this fic will go, but I'm optimistic. Stannis as an amalgamation of some of the more serious medieval kings is incredibly appealing. 
> 
> Please leave reviews, they make me better.

* * *

_Ransoms? Ransoms! I am a Lord Paramount of the Realm! I cannot be held for ransom!_

  * **Mace Tyrell, Lord Paramount of the Reach and Lord of Highgarden, upon being informed of the ransom for his life**



_I had seen men dead before. I’d thought I’d seen the worst war could get at the Trident when Robert shattered Rhaegar. Then I saw Storm’s End. The Field of Flowers, the singers call it now. To me it was a field of horror._

  * **Ned Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, on relieving the Siege at Storm’s End.**



Eddard Stark 

He’d feared to see Storm’s End, Gods be told. When they’d pulled little Renly out of a smuggler’s boat on the banks of the Trident, the man who had brought him to Robert spoke of a terrible siege, of food stores gone past breaking point. Little Renly had been so thin Ned had pulled him from the boat with one hand. The boy had said very little, other than to thank his rescuer, but he’d held a small cat and simply refused to let it go, even when the maesters gave him food to eat. The boy was so painfully thin, but he’d stood before his brother so straight in back and firm of being all around had marveled at it. A man whispered that the Baratheon brothers were born soldiers, if one so young could hold himself so well after such hardship. 

Robert had called his lords to counsel within the hour of Renly’s arrival. From his bed, his side still split half open, Robert had raged first at Mace Tyrell for starving his little brothers:

“Find any Tyrell prisoners we’ve taken! No rations for a fortnight!”

Then, he had thundered at his lords:

“None of you knew? Warrior and Father, what do I keep you around for if not to tell me things!”

Finally, all but Ned and old Jon Arryn having been sent away, he had wept. 

“Go find my brother, Ned. Bring me my brother Stannis.”

Ned had been given ten thousand horsemen from the hosts of Arryn, Tully, and Stark. He’d taken Brynden Tully as his second, and made all speed south from the Trident to Storm’s End. Robert had forced a march along the Gold Road, and made camp at Hayford. He would not march on King’s Landing, and would not allow a siege of the place until he knew tidings of his brother. Many knights in Robert’s counsel, including old Jon Arryn, had advised him to make for King’s Landing with all speed, and to end the war as quickly as possible. 

“Not until I know of Stannis.” Robert had thundered. “I left him at Storm’s End to hold it for me, and I’ll not leave him there starving at the behest of a fat prig like Mace Tyrell.”

The ride south ran day and night, and Ned feared his men would waste their horses before they ever reached the walls of Robert’s keep, but he could not stop. Every man had seen Renly, how small he was. Stannis could be no better, and, if Stannis had fallen, he did not wish to imagine Robert’s wrathful response. Robert’s last words to him rang in his ears;

_If Stannis is dead, I’ll burn Highgarden to the ground._

Ned left his host encamped at Bronzegate and covered the last distance with only a few companions. His men were exhausted and their horses needed rest if they were to be brought into battle against the Tyrells. On their march through the Stormlands, they had ridden through many towns and villages, where smallfolk told them of the ravages of the Tyrells. This close to Storm’s End, the only smallfolk they had seen had been strung up corpses. 

It had done nothing to assuage the Stark heir’s concerns. 

Storm’s End sat on a cliff edge looking out onto Shipbreaker Bay. Mace Tyrell had set his camp and siege lines at a low hilltop crested by the King’s Road, giving his army a complete view of the castle, and a dominant position over the castle’s walls, and for miles back the way they had come up the King’s Road. Even from a mile away, Ned could see the long, brilliantly colored lines of Tyrell tents and heraldic banners. He could see easily a hundred tents, and thought perhaps a hundred more were hidden beyond his view. 

“Ethan.” Ned wheeled his horse. “Raise a parley banner. I do not want a fight with Lord Tyrell until I’m ready for one.”

Ethan Glover of Deepwood Motte, a fire haired youth who’d ridden south with Ned to make war on the Mad King, raised a small white pennant on a spear shaft. 

Together, their little pennant held aloft, Ned and his companions rode towards the Tyrell camp. 

Stannis 

Maester Cressen was fussing about his face. The blow to his face had opened the right side of Stannis’s face from his chin across the upper tip of his ear, and the maester feared the wound would not heal well. 

“It is too jagged, my lord.” Cressen murmured as he worked. “I fear I may leave you disfigured.”

“Hah!” Old Estermont had laughed. The old man’s face was half covered in thin muslin bandages. “A war wound to make the ladies swoon is what it is!”

Around him, the Stormlander knights laughed. 

Stannis and his knights had occupied the field tent of Paxter Redwyne. Mace Tyrell’s massive field tent, more a palace of silk and canvas than a tent, was given over to a field hospital for the garrison’s wounded. A half dozen Reach knights and squires, in chains, served food and wine. There was a special sort of justice in making the men of the Reach feed and water the men they had not a long time past been starving to death. The irony was not lost on the men of the Reach, and they leapt to serve the Stormland knights with all the speed of men afraid of their captor’s slightest displeasure.

The Tyrell wounded lay still in the field. Some few septas come with the Tyrell army all the way from Higharden had requested and received permission to treat the wounded Reachmen, but Stannis had ordered Tyrell’s maesters to see first to his own men. _Let the Tyrell men reap what they’ve sown._ He’d thought. _Perhaps a bitter crop will make them more circumspect ._

“Wine!” Old Estermont roared. Maester Cressen frowned. 

“Wine is bad for your blood my lord, and you are wounded.”

“Damn that!” Estermont replied. “I have a thirst!”

Cressen looked to Stannis, who nodded.

“Bring Lord Estermont his wine.”

Paxter Redwyne, Mace Tyrell’s fleet master, stepped forwards, chains about his feet and a decanter in his shaking hands. As he filled Estermont’s goblet, the Stormland knights pelted him with cloths and fine silverware taken from Mace Tyrell’s table. The Arbor lord trembled as he poured, wine splashing from the decanter onto the carpeted ground.

“Don’t waste it you poxy fool!” Aemon Estermont crowed. 

_I can humble the Reach men, but I need not dishonor them._ Stannis thought. _There is no honor in punishing men for following the commands of their liege lord._

“Enough.” He said. “Lord Paxter, give the wine to a pageboy. You’ve endured enough.”

There was a chorus of dissatisfied grumbles from the assembly, most loudly from Aemon Estermont. It died when the lords saw the flicker of a stormy glower on Stannis’ face. Lord Estermont elbowed his son in the ribs, and the young knight got up from his seat for Lord Redwyne.

“Sit my lord,” Old Estermont said genially to Lord Paxter, who half quailed away. “Sit by me and tell me about the Arbor.”

Ser Lyle Morrigen pressed a goblet into Lord Paxter’s hand and guided the Reach knight to his seat. 

“It’s not Arbor gold, Lord Paxter,” he said. “But it will do you good.”

_Sturdy men, the lot of them. Fearless in the field, honorable in the victory._ _A lord can ask for no better._

Stannis rose to his feet, brushing Cressen away with his hand. His men rose from their seats for him, and he waved them back.

“Enjoy yourselves, my lords.” He said. “Drink a goblet for my brother and I.”

He left them toasting his good health. They did not toast Robert, and he did not turn back to correct them. 

_It is not my place to demand respect for Robert from men he has done nothing to earn it from._

Stannis’ men had set a heavy guard around the Tyrell camp. Four hundred men guarded his prisoners, another six hundred posted about the baggage train. He’d allowed no looting, especially not of the Tyrell food stores. _A starving man may die, my lord, if he eats too much too quickly,_ Maester Cressen had said. Strict rationing was still being enforced across his host, even amongst his knights. He’d allowed wine to his men. As he saw it, they’d earned it, and it softened the blow of rationing. 

As he passed the hospice tent, Stannis looked in on Donal Noye, who’d lost his arm to a sword stroke. The maimed blacksmith waved cheerily with a skin of wine at his liege lord, a tutting septa still bandaging his stump. Ser Lester Morrigen, who had lost an ear and suffered a blow to his shoulder with a mace, was singing bawdily with some of his house men. Judging by the blushing septas, the song was filthy. 

Between the camp and Storm’s End, Tyrell men picked their way through a field of corpses under close watch, dragging the bodies of the slain into lines. Squires and heralds, men who had not participated in the fighting, walked the lines of dead men and made a tally of the fallen. Living men would be ransomed, but the slain would be sent back to their houses for burial. A dignity should be afforded a fairly slain man, wherever possible. 

Some of the oldest noble lines in the Reach had ended at Storm’s End. House Ashford was slain entirely in the male line, as was Appleton and Cockshaw. House Footly’s Ser Mawbry had taken a poleaxe point in his guts and Cressen confided in Stannis that it was an even chance the knight would survive the week. He supposed Robert would wish to make friends of these Houses when he took King’s Landing, and for anything else his brother might be, Robert was not stupid. 

“Lonely Stannis,” his brother had called him when Robert feasted the very men who had fought against him at Summerhall. “Can’t make a friend _._ ”

_Mayhaps I will make few friends, brother,_ Stannis thought. _But the men with me are loyal._

The Stormland Houses were smaller as a rule, and poorer. Precious few had marched north to fight alongside Robert. Many had young sons, men Stannis’ age, men like Aemon Estermont and the Morrigen brothers. Men whose fathers would seek good marriages for them. 

_The Reach is short of men, and I am surfeited with eligible bachelors both good and loyal to my House._

From amongst the tents of the Tyrell camp, Stannis watched Mace Tyrell, his green silk coat stained with blood and mud, feebly attempting to drag the headless body of a Reach man in the red tabard and white rose of House Serry out from underneath the dead man’s horse. 

Eddard 

It had not surprised him to be hailed by a man in Baratheon livery as he rode up to the Tyrell camp. The high cloud of ravens above the fields beyond had not surprised him either. He and his companions sat mute and dumb upon their horses and stared at the pair of sentries who arrested their approach. 

Ethan Glover had sworn. Howland Reed said something, and Mark Ryswell then gagged behind his hand. 

Ned had seen a battlefield before, of course. There had been Summerhall, where he and Robert had beaten three armies in a day, and there had been Stoney Sept where a city had burned and Ned had galloped through fire on a horse painted grey with ash to save Robert’s life. The Trident, now, that had been an ugly one. Dornish pikemen dead in the water, Rhaegar with his chest caved in by a warhammer. 

Ned had never seen a field of war as awful to look upon as the field at Storm’s End. The field was too small, too narrow. It simply looked all wrong. Men lay across the field like scythed wheat. Before the castle gates, the bodies piled so high, men clambered over them. He could hear, out on the field, the cries of men still wounded. Thousands of men had died in a space perhaps twice the length of a jousting list. The two sentries before him were emaciated, and bore the marks of fresh fighting. One was bandaged about his forearms, and the other was missing part of an ear. Both were eating what appeared to be cold roast chicken.

“We are here to see the Lord Stannis Baratheon.” Ned said. His voice was even, but his stomach roiled. _DId Stannis do all this? Alone?_

“The commander is with the wounded, my lord.” The earless sentry pointed with a half eaten chicken leg. “The big tent.”

Ned nodded, and rode on. 

“How many men were in Mace Tyrell’s host?” Howland Reed, quiet as smoke, pulled his white courser up beside Ned. The crannogman was very pale. A Tyrell knight, blinded by a blow across his eyes, bumped against the flanks of his horse, leaving a bloody smear across the horse’s flank.

“Twenty thousand.” Ned said.

“I heard twenty five thousand.” Martyn Cassel, steady Martyn Cassel, had a grim look about him. “And it looks to me, Mace Tyrell’s spent his host’s lifeblood to the drop.”

They found Stannis Baratheon sitting amidst his wounded bannermen. The younger Baratheon brother himself was wounded, a horrible gash across his face. Ned had never met Stannis before, but Robert had described his brother to him once or twice. 

_Dark, tall like his brother, but with none of Robert’s light and good humor. Not an ugly man, but no Rhaegar, no Jaime Lannister._

Robert had told him Stannis was foul tempered, unfriendly, unlovable and unwilling to love. _A foul minded brother I’ve got Ned._ He’d said. _A glowering stick in the mud who only thinks of duty and what’s owed him._

This Stannis was not as his brother had described him. He sat amongst his men, not as a lord but as a companion, sharing a bench with a wounded man of House Toyne. His air was even and not unfriendly. His men were deferential to him, respectful in a way not even old Jon Arryn’s knights were to the lord of the Vale. Wounded men, not close to the young Baratheon, hobbled from their sick beds to be near him, to listen to the young lord speak. 

_They love him._ Ned thought. _He has given them this horror and they love him for it._

Stannis must have seen them riding towards him, for he rose to his feet as Ned drew near. Men rose with him.

“Stannis Baratheon!” Ned called. “I come from your brother Robert to relieve you.”

The younger Baratheon brother spread his arms. “I am relieved, ser, though I do not know you.”

“I am Eddard Stark of Winterfell,” Ned said as he dismounted. “I am sorry to see you are wounded.”

Stannis touched his cheek absently. “A Beesbury man, I think. Got me with a halberd.”

Ned nodded. The wound was hard to look at. It tugged Stannis’ features hard to the right, pulling his lip into a half smirk that was not humored, nor friendly in its aspect. 

“I suppose you’ll want your men fed and horses watered?” Stannis asked.

Ned bowed his head. “You’re very generous, but you need it more than we do. My men have supplies.” 

Something flickered over Baratheon's face. Ned could not place it, but it might have been a smile. 

“My prisoners then,” said. “You’ll want to see them.”

Stannis 

He took the young lord Stark and his bannermen down into the field. He knew, from Robert’s infrequent letters, that the lord Stark had seen fighting. More fighting than Stannis, by all accounts. He did not understand why Stark looked ill. 

“So many men…,” Stark said, “A horrible thing.”

“Our enemies, ” Stannis returned “Never to trouble us again.”

He’d introduced Stark to Ser Branston Cuy and to Tanton Fossoway, a squire of only fifteen. The boy still wept for his brother Jerrol who had died trying to kill Stannis. Stannis had given orders for Jerrol Fossoway’s body to be cared for and protected from looting. The knight had tried to surrender before his death, and Stannis held no special grudge against him. Young Tanton was piteously grateful to him. Stannis gave him back his brother’s sword, and said a few words to the boy about his brother’s courage. 

Other Reachmen were less grateful. They were rich men facing heavy ransoms. Stannis told Stark he was intending to ransom his prisoners back to their Houses, and had received a strange look in reply. 

“Should that not be your brother’s decision?” Stark had asked. “He is lord of Storm’s End.”

_Damn Robert. And damn Stark for doubting me._

“My men fought the battle. Not Robert,” he replied. “The money will go to them that fought and to them crippled in the fighting.”

Stark is silent then, and watches Stannis for a long time. When he finally speaks, Stannis does not hear the doubt he’d heard in the other man’s voice, only caution . 

“Robert will expect to be the one to dispose of your prisoners. Especially Mace Tyrell.”

He thinks the words, but does not say them: 

_Damn what Robert wants._

He calls the Reach lords together that night to tell them his terms. His men herded two thousand captured Tyrell knights up into their lost camp, around the wreckage of their baggage train. He speaks to them by the light of a raging bonfire of emptied wagons. They sit in the grass and look up at him with wan, dirty faces. In the darkness at the edges of the firelight, his men wait and listen. Blades glimmer in the dancing lights.

He knows already that his demands will make him few friends in the Reach, but he has killed the better half of the noblemen in that realm and judges it to be no great loss if they should hate him a little more. Stannis’ knights are present, as is Lord Stark. Stark’s bannermen have since ridden off to bring reinforcements from Bronzegate to camp outside Storm’s End.

Stark asked him if he could wait to read his terms to the Tyrell prisoners until they marched to join Robert’s host before King’s Landing. 

_He seeks to delay me until my prisoners are within Robert’s power. He wants to weaken my position and appease Robert, to manage the Baratheon brothers._

Stark’s instincts about Robert were good. Stannis knew Robert would fly into one of his rages the instant he heard what Stannis had done. 

_They do not know Stannis Baratheon._ He thought. _Not Stark, not Robert. My men know me now, and I will honor their great service to me, here and now, before Robert takes it from me._

“My lords,” he began. “You laid siege to my home for a year, and fought me valiantly when I called you to the field. You have done all that honor and duty demand.”

The Reachmen shifted and murmured to each other. Many had replaced their tattered heraldic garments, giving the assembled noble hostages the appearance of a wild bed of flowers. 

_They tend their glory before all else. These men are not soldiers._

“I am a just man.” He said. “And I will ask nothing of any man that is not within his means.” 

He turned to face his own knights. “My lords of Estermont; for your honorable service, I am giving you my prisoners of Ambrose, Crane, and Meadows. They are yours to ransom as you wish. As Meadows is slain in the male line, I will send entreaties on your behalf to the Grassy Vale. The late Lord Meadows has a daughter not much younger than my good cousin Aemon. “

Seated behind the fire, still in his bloody bandages, Old Estermont gave a nod. His son behind him likewise nodded vigorously. 

“Ser Lester, Ser Lyle of Morrigen; I give to you my prisoners of Peake, Shermer, and Vrymel.”

The Morrigen brothers hooted their approval. Crow’s Nest was a poor and dull seat for two young knights, and Stannis expected to hear of wild spending in the pair’s future. 

“To Penrose and Toyne, I give Appleton, Footly, Ashford and Caswell.” 

Penrose and Toyne had sent few men, and second sons to Storm’s End. Most of their strength had marched away with Robert. 

_I must still reward good and loyal service._

“Appleton and Footly are extinct, and I shall make entreaties for those daughters and sisters that remain to those houses on your behalf.”

The men of Penrose and Toyne bowed their heads.

Stannis turned back to the Tyrell bannermen.

“The rest of you as yet unnamed shall be ransomed through me and for the benefit of those men wounded in your assault on my family seat, and to the benefit of the widow Lady Wylde.”

There was a murmuring behind him. His banner men were muttering their approval. Men had loved Gawen Wylde, and they’d been sorely hurt when his mighty heart had been stilled. It had been said that a bard in the Tyrell train was already singing a song of “the knight and his banner” to Baratheon soldiers.

“Do not fear men!”

Stannis knew that voice. He hated that voice.

Mace Tyrell was standing. “Any man not able to pay his ransom may come to House Tyrell for aid.” The fat lord said. “It is not in me to let such brave men as you sit in chains when all that stands between bondage and liberty is a few golden dragons.”

“You are to pay ransom too, my lord of Highgarden.” Stannis said.

If he did not hate the man so awfully, Tyrell’s sputtering might have been amusing.

“I, I, I’m sorry?” He stammered. His whiskers twitched, and quivered, like a rabbit.

Stannis stepped forwards. “You are to be ransomed, _my lord.”_

It had never occurred to him, quite how fat Mace Tyrell really was. The man sweat constantly, and dabbed at himself with a perfumed kerchief. He had a sickly sweet smell. Like rotting flowers. _Or corpses_. Stannis thought.

Color was rising in the flower lord’s cheeks. “Ransomed?” His voice rose in tone and pitch, a high tweet of indignation. “Ransomed?!”

Men stepped in from the edge of the firelight. Stannis saw Donal with his one arm and his hammer. He waved them back.

“Ransomed my lord.” He said cooly. “Thirty thousand dragons and the taxes and sovereignties of all towns and Houses from Cider Hall in the west up the extent of the river Mander to Tumbleton.”

Mace Tyrell exploded. He raged. Spittle flew from his lips and his hands gesticulated wildly. It was too much, he said. It would bankrupt him. It was cruel vengeance by an unchivalrous brat. An honorable man would never demand such a vile ransom from a man he defeated in battle. 

“Though I suppose I might not have expected honor from a man who would kill his surrendered prisoners!” Mace jabbed a finger at Stannis’ chest. The Lord of Highgarden fell silent, his chest heaving.

The assembly was deadly silent. No man rose to join Mace Tyrell in his outrage. They looked down at their boots, or away into the dark. A few looked to Stannis. Paxter Redwyne, his face screwed up into a wincing worry. Branston Cuy his eyes wide,afraid and pleading.

_They fear me. They fear what I will do._

Stannis stared at Mace Tyrell for a long moment. Tyrell shifted, and squirmed, and finally began to shake under his gaze. He began to stammer, to mumble incoherently.

“Thirty thousand dragons, Lord Tyrell.” Stannis said. “To pay the families of the men who died for my House and keep. Your men will be released on parole when they swear before the Seven to pay their ransoms in a fulsome period of time. You will pay in a year's time, and be released upon your relinquishing of those lands.”

He turned away from Tyrell. Beyond the fire, Ned Stark was staring at him, horror in his eyes.

_You killed your prisoners? How could you kill your prisoners?_

Stannis looked to his men. None of them had horror in their gaze. Cold iron looked back at him from Estermont, from the Morrigens.

_They know how I could kill my prisoners._

“You will pay Lord Tyrell, or I will hang you from a tree.”

Stannis walked away from the firelight, into the ranks of his men.


	3. Man of War

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The taking of King's Landing. A further change to the Game of Thrones.
> 
> As always, reviews make me a better writer!

* * *

_In retrospect, it was the younger brother, not the elder, we should have been watching._

  * **Tywin Lannister to his brother, Kevan Lannister on Stannis Baratheon** ****



_He was not the most beautiful man I had ever seen. That was an accolade for a man without his wounds, his suffering. But in that moment, I think he was the finest. He bore himself with a dignity that not even Rhaegar could have matched._

  * **Elia Martell on Stannis Baratheon at the Sack of King's Landing**



* * *

Robert Baratheon 

He was still dreaming of Rhaegar. Every night, he stood in the waters of the Trident, and faced Rhaegar. The battle would be the same, every night. Rhaegar would advance, beneath his glimmering shield, confident, assured, unblemished. Robert would wait for him in the water, his chest heaving, soaked with sweat, his cloak in tatters, blood staining his tabard. Rhaegar would feint with his sword point, swift as running water, first at Robert’s legs, then at his gut. Every time, Robert would parry the first blow, but his aching arms would be too slow to parry the second. His muscles would scream in agony as he tried, every night, to raise his war hammer to stop Rhaegar’s shining sword. 

He was always too slow. The blade would pass under the lip of his breastplate and plunge into his body, piercing him above his left hip. It was agony. The blade skidded against his hip bone, and made him double up in wordless pain. 

Rhaegar would laugh at him then. Or Robert imagined it thus. Mayhap Rhaegar had in truth spoken to Robert, tried to explain, tried to take his surrender. It did not really matter. Robert would hear laughter, every night. 

He would rise up, and behind his visor, Rhaegar’s eyes would go wide. Robert’s hammer would swing, and Robert would cave in the Dragon Prince’s breastplate. Rhaegar would go down into the Trident, gasping. Robert would stand over him. The hammer roee up, Rhaegar would reach out a hand, and the dream would end. 

Every morning, when he woke, his wounded side screamed in protest and his arms ached as though he’d just come from the field. 

He hated these dreams. He hated these dreams, and he hated the pain. The maestros said the wound was clean and was healing, but it burned like a scalding iron and it hobbled him. He could scarcely lift his hammer without doubling up in pain. 

The wine helped. But then there were Jon Arryn’s lectures, and the headaches. 

Jon Arryn was lecturing him again. Tywin Lannister was marching on King’s Landing from the Westerlands, and Jon wanted him to begin his attack on the city before the Lion of Casterly Rock could take the field against him. Robert paced his tent, his warhammer in one hand, a goblet in the other. Page boys cowered in the shadows of the tent. He’d sent all his other lords away, and away they’d gone, scampering like mice. Only Jon had stayed to _lecture him._

Tywin Lannister and ten thousand westermen. Robert had thirty eight thousand men encamped. He had ten thousand riders tearing through the Stormlands to reach Storm’s End. He had Jon’s fifteen thousand Vale knights to his west. The Tullys had twenty five thousand men, now that Late Lord Frey had decided to show up, guarding Robert’s northern flank. He had all the armed men north of the River Rhoyne, and Jon Arryn was worried Tywin Lannister was to take the field against him. 

“I’ll not move, Jon.” Robert said, “Not till I have Stannis in front of me, alive.”

Jon Arryn, greying and tired, leaned over the wide circular table that dominated Robert’s tent. “And what if he’s dead Robert?”

Robert stopped his pacing. “What?”

Jon paused. A worried expression contorted his face into a tight lipped wince.

“What if Stannis is dead, Robert?”

The hammer came down on the table with a crack. The table split down its middle, spraying detritus in all directions. Jon Arryn fell back onto his rump, staring. Robert towered over him, hammer still in hand, his face bright red and contorted in rage.

“If Stannis is dead, I’ll march on the Reach! I’ll burn every village from here to the Westerlands! I’ll throw Mace Tyrell and his whole fucking family from the walls of Highgarden and burn that fucking keep to the ground!”

The hammer swung back and forth, whistling softly. 

“I’ll hang every man who besieged my brother by their fucking necks, Jon. I’ll kill their families. If Stannis is dead, I swear by the Seven, I’ll kill them all.”

Jon sat on the carpeted ground and stared up at him. His old blue eyes glittered like sapphires. 

Robert was a boy again, weeping angry at being thumped by the Eyrie’s master of arms, crying for his mother and father late at night when he thought no one could hear. The hammer fell.

“He is my brother, Jon,” Robert said. “I will not lose my brother.”

Jon Arryn stood. He gripped Robert by the shoulders. He had old, strong hands, hands of stone.

“I will send heralds to Tywin Lannister’s army today.” He said. “I will find his purpose, and if he is with us, then he will wait, with us, for news from Storm’s End.”

Robert sniffed. His side ached. 

“Thank you, Jon.”

Jon Arryn smiled.

“Of course my boy,” he clapped his hands together, “Now, go entertain your bannermen. It’s bad enough, you're raging at them all the time, now they come to me rather than face your wrath.”

Robert managed a smile. “Aye, I’ll go do that.”

“And take Renly with you!” Jon cried after him. “The boy’s getting fat, being cooed over by the girls in the mess tents.”

Elia Martell 

On a clear morning, if one was inclined to look, one could see Robert Baratheon’s army from the Red Keep. A thousand banners, fluttering like the wings of roosting birds, in the winds that rolled in off of Blackwater Bay.

She liked to walk the walls in the morning since Rhaegar had gone. King’s Landing was quiet in the earliest hours of morning, before the sea mist lifted, and the sun truly rose. What few soldiers remained in the city under King Aerys’ command were far below, manning the walls of the outer city. Some few Dornishmen were among them, she knew. The bedraggled remains of the ten thousand spears her brother Doran had sent to her runaway husband to battle the man he’d cuckolded. So many men had marched away from the city with Rhaegar. 

So few had come back. 

Rhaegar had tried to speak to her before he left. To explain himself, she’d imagined. She’d not allowed him to. He’d tried to see their children, and she’d denied him that as well. When he’d ridden out of the city, he’d left words for her. She had burned his letter. A pale blue cloth had floated in the breeze around his mailed arm, and she’d known whose favor he wore. 

When news of Rhaegar’s death at the Trident reached the court, many had wept. Many of the nobles still in the city had quickly fled. Aerys had raged, screaming of wildfire and the wrath of dragons. Elia had shed tears, though not for Rhaegar.

_Not Rhaegar, never again for Rhaegar._

She had cried for her children, who had lost their father. Children whose lives were now at risk. Court gossip was an unreliable thing, but the stories of Robert Baratheon were not comforting.

_A mad demon, they call him. A horned god, come to punish Rhaegar for his impropriety, and Aerys for his cruelty._

True, she could think of few people more deserving. By every standard, Aerys Targaryen, second of his name, was a raving lunatic. He spent all his time in the throne room now, barely coherent, barely aware of those around him. Young Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard stood behind him like a pale shadow, his beautiful face impassive as Aerys screamed of burning men alive. 

_And Rhaegar...was Rhaegar._

She turned her gaze away from the Baratheon army, and stared out to sea. The Blackwater was stormy. Dark clouds hung low over the mouth of the bay, a sure sign of rain and an ugly storm. Dark weather for dark times she supposed. Above her, in one of the towers of the Red Keep, her children were sleeping. 

“Good morning my lady,” a quavering voice called out to her. Grand Maester Pycelle was walking towards her, his old back hunched, his entire body shaking from the effort of keeping the ancient man upright. His grey robes seemed made of lead, as heavy as the metal of his Maester’s chain, weighty on the old man’s back.

_He calls me my lady, not princess._ She thought. _Rhaegar has discarded me, and so has gone my position and my titles._

She did not much mind. 

“Good morning Grand Maester,” she said. She could not manage more than a small smile at the old man, but he seemed gratified that she had made any effort at all. He smiled back, his old eyes glimmering. 

“And...and how are you this gloomy morning?” Pycelle asked. He leaned heavily on the wall beside her, seeming exhausted by the slight exertion.

“I am as you see me.” she replied. She laughed bitterly, though she had not meant it so.

He ducked his head. “I am sorry, my lady.” He reached out with one hand, and gave her shoulder a gentle, if awkward, pat.

Something was in his other hand, a small scroll of parchment, bound up in twine. 

“Sending a raven?” she asked him. The Red Keep’s rookery was some distance down the wall, an arduous journey for a man of Pycelle’s age and condition. Pycelle should have sent a servant.

The speed at which the parchment disappeared into the folds of his robe told her everything she needed to know of its contents. 

“You are betraying the King, Grand Maester,” she said. 

Pycelle lunged for her, far faster than a man of his ancient decrepitude should have been able to manage. His hands had reached for her, tried to seize her.

_To send me over the edge of the wall,_ she realized. Fear clutched at her heart, an icy hand squeezing hard. 

_Elia Martell leapt to her death after the death of her lord and husband. The grief had been too much for her, and all had known she was fragile. So sad._

It was fortunate, in that moment, that she remembered the small curved dagger she wore on the chained belt at her waist. Her brother Oberyn had given it to her as a name day gift. It was a little thing, more suited for cutting letters. She staggered away from him, clutching at her waist. He pursued her, seizing her by the sleeve of her dress. She grasped the dagger hilt and slashed upwards. The sleeve of her dress tore clean away, followed by a thin crimson stream of blood. She’d cut him across the underside of his forearm. 

Her dagger point glittered beneath Pycelle’s chin.

“I do not think that was a wise decision Grand Maester.” She said, “certainly, not in hindsight.”

He looked at her, and she saw a flicker of cunning there.

“Clearly not,” he said. 

Pycelle straightened, rolling his shoulders. He was taller, broader, younger in both appearance and in aspect. His eyes, once half lidded, gazed down at her coldly. He stepped towards her, and she stumbled back. Her dagger point stayed at his throat. 

With a long finger, he tapped the point of her dagger. 

“Quite a fang you have there, my lady of Dorne.”

“Quite a fang indeed,” she replied. “Venomous too.”

She’d meant it as bravado, to show she was unafraid. He was still bigger than her, and likely stronger. She’d said it to steel herself, yet Pycelle’s face went an ugly pale.

“Venomous?” He asked.

_He thinks I’ve poisoned him._

“My...my lady…,” he stammered, “my lady...please!”

_He believes me._ She thought. _Mother Rhoyne bless Oberyn for his reputation for poison._

“Give me your message,” she demanded. He handed it over quickly. He was tugging at his robe, trying to tear a strip to bind his arm. She stepped back from him, and pulled apart the twine binding. Pycelle had written only two lines on his little piece of parchment. 

“My lady….” Pycelle was sitting now, tears welling in his eyes.

She held the note between her index and forefinger. “Does Tywin Lannister expect this note?”

“No, my lady!” Pycelle said. “I only sought to relieve the suffering of the realm! Aerys is mad!”

She knelt before him. Her dress was of Ibbenese silk, dyed an orange made only in the city of Lys. Her chained belt was Braavosi bronze, and her curved knife was from the master smiths of the Sunspear in Dorne. Pycelle looked up at her, the way men often looked at her brother Oberyn. 

“Who expects this note, Grand Maester?”

“No one, my lady of Dorne...Princess Elia! No one!”

_My titles return like summer rain, all at once._

She felt, fumbling and hasty, at her collar. She wore a small vial of perfume around her neck. It had been a gift, Rhaegar had said he liked it.

_Like the scent of summer, he had said._

She held it before Pycelle.

“Do you wish to live, Grand Maester?”

He nodded, wide eyed and weeping.

“Then you will write for me a new letter, and send for me a raven.”

Stannis 

He left most of his garrison at Storm’s End. Most of his men are wounded, and too starved to be of any worth to Robert, so he leaves them behind to hold the castle and keep his prisoners. 

He would take only his noblemen with him. In the great feasting hall of Storm’s End on the eve of his departure, before Eddard Stark and his banner men, he made his final arrangements. Prisoners already paroled would ride with him to formally surrender to Robert. Those who had not, including Mace Tyrell, would remain in the dungeons. Small folk made refugees by the Tyrell host would be welcomed to shelter in Storm’s End to prevent banditry. Before all his knights, and to their unanimous acclaim, he raised Donal Noye to knighthood. Men cheered the one armed smith who had been first into the Tyrell line when the garrison had made its charge. Aemon Estermont eagerly suggested a hammer crushing roses for Noye’s sigil. The Morrigen brothers suggest their sister as a bride with the same enthusiasm. 

For the second time in his life, Stannis saw Donal Noye weep. Eddard Stark, who had not said a word to Stannis since Mace Tyrell’s outburst, offered Stannis a weak nod of approval. 

_It is just to reward loyal men. They are far too rare to not be treasured._

Stannis and his knights rode at the head of Eddard Stark’s ten thousand cavalry north towards King’s Landing. Eddard Stark rode south, to Dorne, with six companions. He did not tell Stannis why he was riding south, and Stannis did not ask. Aemon Estermont, who had been Stannis’ shadow since the end of the siege, bore the huge tapestry banner. Aemon’s father, old uncle Estermont, rode up and down the line of men with the vigor of a man one third his age, chatting with Stark men at arms, sharing wine with Valemen. The Morrigen brothers, in their black plate and turquoise tabards, guarded the long line of prisoners. Lester and Lyle Morrigen, a pair of twins, had unified their personal heraldries. It was now impossible to tell one from the other when he was in his full plate.  
  


Robert was encamped some miles from King’s Landing, at the edges of the ancient suburbs that had grown up around the capitol centuries before. Seventy five thousand men thereabouts, from the Westerlands, the Vale, the Stormlands, the Riverlands, and the North, arrayed for war against the dynasty that had ruled Westeros for almost three centuries. The hosts had only lately begun to throw up their lines of siege, raising catapults and trenching earthworks to move men into position beneath the walls. Stannis saw the banners of well over a hundred houses within the host, the Lannister Lion prominent among them. 

“Lord Tywin has declared for Robert, eh?” Aemon Estermont said, his chestnut charger alongside Stannis’ grey.

“Lord Tywin likes to be on the winning side,” Stannis replied. The Lannister Host raised their tents in uniform lines, straight rows of blood red cloth. _Disciplined men under an exacting commander_ , thought Stannis.

Robert’s camp was just beyond the Lannister line, a mismatched and carnival collection of multi colored tents and heraldic pennants. Robert was ever the warrior, never the organizer. 

_Such things are beneath Robert,_ he thought. 

Lines of men part to allow the column of horsemen to pass. Aemon paraded his horse forward of the column, the Baratheon Tapestry fluttering in the wind. Its yellow fabric is stained with blood and dirt and its ends are tattered and ragged, but something welled up in Stannis as he watched the black stag rear and dance. 

He was not alone in that outpouring of feeling. Stormlanders within the host raised a cry as Aemon thundered back and forth before them. Many of the men with Robert had left brothers or cousins at Storm’s End, and Stannis’ host drew from them joyful cheering. 

Somewhere behind him, Stannis heard a minstrel begin to sing. 

Then another voice sharp and discordant. “Where is he?” a voice thundered. “Where the bloody hell is he?”

Robert nearly pulled Stannis from his horse. Stannis’ brother was clad only in boots and trousers, his midriff bandaged with thick gauze. He stank of wine, and his eyes were a weepy red. He let Stannis dismount, and then pulled him close for a hug so tight Stannis thought his back might break. 

“Don’t you ever worry me like that again!” Robert snarled. “Don’t you do it Stannis.” 

_He is crying._

“I held Storm’s End for you, Robert,” Stannis replied. Robert would not let him go, and Stannis belatedly returned Robert’s bone cracking embrace. 

“And got your face mangled into the bargain,” Robert said. “How the hell did that happen? It’s an ugly looking wound.”

Stannis touched his face. He was still bloody, from his chin to past his right ear, along the length of his face. Maester Cressen’s stitches and bandages had sealed the wound, but it would be some time before it truly began to heal. 

“A halberd,” Stannis said, “a Hightower man I think.”

Robert was about to reply, when something small and solid struck Stannis in the knees and sent him tumbling.

Renly clutched him around his knees, his little face full of tears.

“You came back,” The little boy said. “You came back.” 

Robert 

His brother was different. His bannermen were different. Something had changed while Robert had been gone from Storm’s End, and Robert did not care for it. Men deferred to Stannis now, when they once would have only ever deferred to Robert. He’d heard uncle Estermont call Stannis ‘my lord’, and cousin Aemon shadowed Stannis as though he were his squire. 

Robert had called for a celebration for his brother’s safe return, and at table he had heard Jason Mallister regale the assembly with the story of the Trident. Robert had expected the usual dutiful and loyal applause of his bannermen, but Lester Morrigen rose to tell a competing tale of the battle at Storm’s End. The Field of Flowers, Lester called it. The greatest victory of the age, Uncle Estermont said, where a brave band of companions had crushed the flowers of Tyrell glory. Men had pestered the Stormland Lords with questions of the battle, and Robert had glowered quietly into his cups. Stannis did not answer questions posed to him, leaving the answering to his companions, but Robert knew his younger brother was reveling in the acclaim. Renly sat at Stannis’ side, staring up at his brother with shining eyes. When Tygett Lannister proclaimed aloud that he would have given the yearly incomes of the Westerlands to see Stannis defeat the fat flower Mace Tyrell, Robert nearly exploded in fury. 

_He thinks to eclipse me,_ Robert thought, _he thinks one battle makes him the equal of his big brother. Did I not win three battles in a day? Did I not kill Rhaegar at the Trident? Do they forget so quickly who they will owe their futures to?_

His glowering had not gone unnoticed. Tywin Lannister was watching Robert with his cold, green, cat’s eyes. Jon Arryn, seated across from him, and on Stannis’ left, kicked him hard in the shins.

_Show some humility Robert,_ he old man’s eyes seemed to say. _He is your brother._

Robert stood up, and raised his goblet. 

“Sers! A toast!” The assembly rose.

“To Stannis, my brother, a born warrior like his father and his big brother!”

Knights and lords cheered and drank. Men slapped Stannis across the back or reached across the tables to shake Stannis by the hand. Robert’s younger brother flushed and seemed to shrink back into himself, awkward and uncomfortable with the adulation. Stannis’ eyes flickered to Robert, and Robert saw gratitude there, if only for a brief moment. 

Stannis said something to Aemon Estermont. The young knight stole away, and soon returned, a tapestry wrapped around a spear shaft in his hands. 

“A gift for Robert Baratheon!” Aemon cried. “The bloody standard of the Baratheons at Storm’s End!”

“For my brother, who slew Rhaegar Targaryen at the Trident,” Stannis’ voice was even, and firm. He looked Robert directly in the eyes. Men cheered again, and Robert saluted Stannis with his goblet.

_Don’t you forget it, little brother._

Tywin and Kevan Lannister came to Robert late in the evening. The feast was long over, and most of the participants had floated away to their tents or to stable their horses. Stannis, and some of his men still remained, talking quietly of some business or other. Hoster Tully hovered like an attentive mayfly around Robert and Jon Arryn, eager to listen, but not to contribute. Hoster Tully was a man ever eager for advantage, but never generous. 

“I have received a raven, Lord Robert.” Tywin wore a dark velvet surcoat emblazoned with golden lion heads. His brother, Kevan, still wore his dark crimson war plate. Tywin did not wait to be invited to sit, but took a place beside Jon Arryn. Kevan Lannister remained standing. 

“A raven, eh?” Robert had not meant to get drunk, but he was still irritable, and his side had ached, and so he had drank. “What of it?”

The Lord of Lannister held out a tiny parchment in long, gold ringed, fingers.

Jon Arryn reached for it, but Robert snatched it from him. He read quickly, and rose with such speed he upset the table. Wine splashed from goblets, and men turned to look. Tywin gave him an icy glare, his hands wet with spilt wine.

“Summon my lords.” Robert growled to Jon Arryn, who was staring up at him, bewildered. “The Mad King is finished. I want a counsel of war within the hour.”

_My Lord Tywin,_

_Princess Elia Martell has turned the Dornish Spears within the city against the Mad King. Tomorrow, at dawn, they shall open the city for you at the Lion Gate. I beg you, be ready and attack with all speed. King Aerys grows more unstable by the day, and the Princess fears for the lives of her children should her bravery be discovered._

_Your loyal servant_

Robert’s lords assembled within his tent. A map of King’s Landing had been laid across a wide banqueting table, around which Robert’s lords gathered themselves. The Tullys, Hoster and Brynden were there, along with half a dozen lesser bannermen. The Northern lords stood with the Riverlanders. Ned was married to Hoster’s daughter, and in his absence, they gravitated to the Tullys. Jon Arryn came alone, supreme master of the Vale Lords. Tywin Lannister and his three brothers were there too, Tywin to the fore, the littler lions prowling behind him. Stannis and the Stormland lords stood together, though Robert noted that they stood as Tywin’s brothers did, _behind_ Stannis. 

“We have received word from King’s Landing.” Robert said when the last lord, decrepit old Walder Frey late as always, joined them. “From a servant of Lord Lannister within the Red Keep.”

He pointed to Tywin, and the golden lord bowed his head.

“The Dornish are against the Mad King. “ Robert said. “Elia Martell has turned them against the Targaryens for the insult paid to her by her dead fool of a husband. At dawn tomorrow, they will open the gates and give the city over to us.”

Murmurs went through the tent.

“How can we be sure?” Hoster Tully asked. “This could be a ruse to draw us into ambush, ill prepared.”

A few men within the tent chorused in assent. Robert scoffed aloud.

“The letter comes from a man I trust.” Tywin Lannister’s voice cut through the rumblings like a knife. “He has served me and my house for a long time. He will not betray us.”

“How can you know?” Brynden Tully retorted. The Blackfish spread his arms wide. “Aerys might have your man in chains for all we know.”

He turned to Robert. “Damn this letter my lord. Let us do this properly, not with treason, but with catapults and siege towers. We’ll be in soon enough.”

The Riverlanders hammered their fists on the table. So too did some of the Valemen, and the Northerners. 

“Quiet!” Robert thundered. The tent fell silent. “Lord Tywin, how can we know the truth of this letter?”

Tywin stared at Robert. It was not a friendly look. 

_Because he says so._

“The raven came from Grand Maester Pycelle.” Tywin said after a long moment. “If Aerys knew Pycelle was for us, we would see his burning corpse hanging from the walls.”

More murmuring and whispers echoed Tywin’s words. _How can men be surprised Tywin owned men on the Small Counsel?_ Robert almost laughed aloud. _Tywin Lannister, who ruled the realm while Aerys raved._

A self satisfied sneer danced over Tywin Lannister’s face. His brothers preened behind him.

“Send a reliable host forward to clear the way.” Stannis stood abreast of the table. “If the Dornish mean to turn over the city, they will have to kill those men who stay loyal to the King. Robert, let me take my men forwards at dawn and secure the Lion Gate. If all goes as the Maester claims, we will signal you for a general advance on the city.”

The Stormland knights hammered the table. Tywin favored Stannis a small nod, his brother Kevan pounded on the table with his fist. 

_Your men already, Stannis? I am gone from the Stormlands not a year, and they’re already your men?_

“If the gates open, then what?” Jon Arryn asked.

“The Dornish will keep the rest of the city garrison occupied.” Stannis said. He drew a long line across the map, from Lion Gate to the Red Keep. “While the rest of our army advances into the city, I will take my men and secure the Red Keep and Maegor’s Holdfast for Robert. We will secure Aerys and the rest of the royal family….”

“No!” Robert said, more loudly than perhaps he had meant to. Certainly louder than any man was expecting, for his knights and lords turned to him with surprised faces. “You will not take Aerys.”

Stannis began to speak, but Robert waved him down. Anger was running hot in him now, buoyed by the wine in his blood. Stannis wanted to seize the glory from him, to build up a legend for himself. _No, no, never. I am Robert Baratheon, and the victory is mine, or no one’s._

“You will take a hundred men and secure the Lion Gate.” Robert declared. “Tully, Jon, Lannister, you will secure the city. I will take a thousand men and capture the Red Keep myself. Aerys is mine.”

Stannis 

Dawn came with thick fog and dark, storm ridden skies. Rain fell over King’s Landing, as if presaging an ill fate for the city. The sky matched Stannis’ mood. He’d argued with Robert in private after counsel, questioning his brother’s eagerness to expose himself to risk when he had lately been wounded near to death. Robert, deep in his cups, had raged at him so loudly that Stannis was sure they had heard him in King’s Landing. Ultimately, Jon Arryn had stopped them before they came to blows, but only moments before. 

Robert had commanded Stannis away to ready his men. He’d summoned Tywin Lannister to his tent, and within an hour Stannis learned that Kevan Lannister and a hundred Lannister knights were to join Stannis in seizing the Lion Gate. Among them were Sers Amory Lorch and Gregor Clegane, men of dark repute Stannis was ill disposed to even let assume the field, let alone fight beside him. As a precaution, Stannis doubled his men. Two hundred Stormland knights and men at arms, all men from the Storm’s End garrison, would come with him. Aemon and the Morrigens would stay with Stannis personally, as would the smuggler who had brought Renly to safety. Stannis’ men had discovered him within Robert’s host, and brought him before Stannis that night. Stannis had rewarded him with knighthood, and let Renly wield the sword. The little boy had done it with great seriousness, and the smuggler had been grateful. Ser Davos Seaworth, newly clad in ill fitting plate and mail, wielding a sword he’d borrowed from a Penrose Knight, would bear the tapestry banner for Stannis’ band. 

Stannis, Kevan Lannister, and their three hundred men had crawled, hidden in the twilight of dawn and by the dense sea fog, to within a hundred meters of Lion Gate. The men masked their approach within the crumbled and burnt shells of the outer city, and waited. 

“I hate rain.” Kevan Lannister muttered to himself, crouched behind the shattered ruin of a doorway, his red cloak soaked almost black, water pouring down his gorget into his armor. 

Stannis did not reply. He did not trust the Lannister knight, nor his two butchers, that followed him like shadows. Amory Lorch was drunk, and unsteady on his feet. Gregor Clegane was breathing like a furnace bellows, and even Lannister men gave the giant a wide berth. 

“My lord.” Aemon tapped Stannis on his pauldron. “Look!”

Lion Gate was creaking open. A man, in the armor of a Gold Cloak, staggered out. A long gaping wound ran from his shoulder down into his midriff. The man fell to his knees, and then over onto his face.

“Now!” Kevan Lannister hissed to his men. “Now, now!”

Lannister men raised horns, and raised a tumultuous blast. Davos Seaworth rose to his feet and began to wave his banner back and forth over his head.

Stannis drew his sword. 

“All men to advance.” He said to Aemon. The Estermont knight nodded, and unlooped a spiked mace from his belt. Behind them, the Morrigens and two hundred Stormlanders drew their steel. 

“For Storm’s End!” Aemon Estermont bellowed. “For Stannis Baratheon!”

The Stormlanders charged. Lannister men followed on behind. The Dornishmen fell aside to let them pass. A small cluster of dead men lay about the gate, surrounded by Dornishmen with red blades.

“On, on!” Kevan Lannister cried. Lannister men poured past the Dornish and Stormlanders. “To the Red Keep!”

“Where are you going?” Lester Morrigen called. “Our orders are to hold the gate!”

“Your orders.” Kevan Lannister replied. He turned away and marched into the city, flanked by Lorch and Clegane. 

Stannis watched him go. Something ugly was happening. Something born of Robert’s drunken anger, and Tywin Lannister’s deviousness.

Aemon Estermont raised his helmet visor to call to Stannis. 

“What the hell are the Lannister’s playing at?” Aemon asked.

“I know not!” Stannis yelled back. Men were all around them, pushing and shoving. Up on the walls, Stannis could hear the sounds of fighting. 

“I do not like this, my lord!” Aemon cried. “Nor I!” Lyle Morrigen yelled. “This has a wicked feel about it!”

Stannis ground his teeth. Someone, and it could only have been Robert or Tywin Lannister, had changed the Lannister vanguard’s orders. Amory Lorch and Clegane had joined the host, and Stannis could think of no purpose those two brutes could be put to save for murder and plundering. 

He looked back through the Lion Gate. Robert’s banners were storming out of the fog, thousands of men on horseback and on foot, pouring towards the exposed and helpless city. 

“Aemon!” Stannis shouted.

“My lord?”

“All Stormland men to advance to the Red Keep with all speed! You Dornishmen, with us!” 

Stannis set off at a run, his men racing to keep pace with him. Somewhere in the city ahead of them, a fire had been lit. The ill feeling in Stannis’ gut grew like a weed, transforming itself into a horrible sense of dread.

_What have you done, Robert?_

Elia 

Forty Dornish spear men were outside her chamber door. Aegon bawled and cried in the arms of one of her servant girls. Little Rhaenys clutched Elia’s skirts and cried. They had seen the smoke rising from the lower city. Something had gone horribly wrong. 

“No one will harm you, Princess.” the captain of her guard, Abbas, told her. He was older, a Sunspear man of the Salty Dornish, well built and well armored in steel plate. “You are entirely safe.”

The words were comforting, but Elia did not believe them. Pycelle had assured her the city would fall with little violence, that Tywin Lannister would not wish for a bloody sack of the city.

_Lord Lannister wishes for peace my lady, for good sense to return to the realm. Nothing more._

Screaming was echoing up from the lower city, and Elia knew Pycelle had lied. From her chamber balcony, she could see dark, acrid clouds of smoke rising from the Lion Gate, and the dancing lights of flames in the Street of Silk. 

Her daughter tugged on her dress, her face a puffy red and streaked with tears. 

“I’m scared.” The little girl wept. “Momma, I’m scared.”

Elia knelt and cupped her daughter’s face in her hands. “All will be well, my love,” she said with a soothing tone she did not feel herself. “Do you think I would let anything happen to you?”

Rhaenys sniffed. “No.” she said.

“Captain Abbas will keep us safe,” Elia kissed her daughter’s brow. “Won’t you captain?”

The Dornish captain gave Rhaenys a wink and wiggled his long moustache. The little girl gave a small, wavering, giggle.

“Go sit with your brother and Balerion, my heart.” Elia kissed her daughter again. “Be brave for me.”

The sounds of fighting were growing louder below them. Elia stepped out onto the balcony and watched the fires spread. The gates of the Red Keep had been thrown open, presumably by her own men, by her order, and Robert Baratheon’s men were unimpeded in their race into the Red Keep. The city had opened itself to them without a fight, and they had fallen upon it and its people like ravenous hounds. 

A contingent of men were storming up the drawbridge into Maegor’s Holdfast, stopping only briefly to butcher the small band of Targaryen guardsmen who foolishly stood in their way. As the men moved on, she saw only a bloody smear where the guardsmen had made their stand. 

The fighting was inside the Holdfast now. Soon it would be over, she knew, although the sack of the city might continue for many days. Robert’s men would find Aerys, raving of dragon fire in the throne room. They would drag the old mad man from the Iron Throne, and would butcher him like a wild animal. No doubt they would also kill the last of his King’s Guard, young Jaime Lannister. 

_Does Tywin know he has condemned his son to death?_ She thought. _Does he care?_

One of her handmaidens, the one holding Aegon, had begun to sob uncontrollably. The girl cried so hard she shook. Elia went to her and took Aegon from her. Her other handmaidens held the girl and whispered false comforts to her as she cried. Rhaenys stared at the crying handmaiden, her bright violet eyes swimming with fresh tears.

“Hush my love.” Elia pulled her daughter to her. “All will be well.”

A man screamed beyond the door. Then another. Steel rang against steel. Captain Abbas stepped in front of Elia, pushing Elia and Rhaenys behind him.

“To the balcony, Princess.” He said quietly. 

For two agonizing minutes, the sounds of fighting and dying raged beyond the door. Something slammed hard against the entrance to her chamber, the door shaking on its hinges. It struck the door again, and the door shook so hard Elia was certain it would burst inwards. In Elia’s arms, Rhaenys began to scream. 

The door lock gave way, the door swinging violently inwards. A giant of a man, clad in ill forged, crude plate, fell forwards onto his face through the doorway. 

Five knights in full plate stepped through the doorway. Three were barely standing, bloodied and battered. A fourth wrenched a bent longsword from the giant’s back, then threw the blade away. 

“Who are you?” Abbas asked. The captain held his tulwar high before him, turning to menace at first one man, and then the next. 

“Put up your sword Dornishman.” The tallest of the knights stepped forward. He wore black lacquered plate and mail, and a simple visored helm. A yellow tabard was cinched at his belt by a leather sword belt. A black stag danced across his chest.

_A Baratheon._ Elia thought. _Too thin to be the elder brother, and too simply armored._

“I will not.” Abbas said. “Not till I know your names, ser.”

The Baratheon pulled away his helm, handing it to one of his companions. He was dark, like his brother, his hair cropped short, and his jawline hard. He would be handsome, but all the fullness of his face seemed to have been drawn away, leaving him gaunt and of a severe cast. Dark shadows cloaked ink blue eyes. A horrific scar wound its way across the knight’s face, tugging his features hard to the right, casting his mouth in a permanent humorless half smile. 

“I am Stannis Baratheon, brother to Robert Baratheon.” The knight said. He faced Elia, and bowed his head. “You have my protection, my lady, for both you and your children.”


	4. Caen and Troyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robert takes King's Landing, and Stannis Baratheon does his duty. Elia Martell is not the weak woman Rhaegar discarded.
> 
> As always, leave reviews!!!!!

* * *

_Oh dear rowan bower, dear rowan bower,_

_Where have you been growing in these storms?_

_Where have you been growing in these storms and this dark water?_

_Oh dear mother, dear mother,_

_What have you raised me up for?_

_What have you raised me up for, and conscripted me for war?_

  * **Lyrics from a Stormland folk song written during Robert’s Rebellion**



_Never have I met a man who treats his duty to his family with at once such reverence, and such disdain._

  * **Tywin Lannister to his brother Kevan, on Stannis Baratheon** ****



* * *

Elia 

She allowed herself to be led through the halls of the Holdfast without complaint. Fifty Dornishmen are left to guard her children under Abbas, and Stormland men are sent to bring the rest of the Dornish garrison to the Red Keep. 

Stannis Baratheon led her himself, shooing away his wounded men. All four had protested, then sagged exhausted into the arms of Elia's maids. 

Stannis Baratheon was a very strange man. He did not speak to her, and held her firmly by the arm, his longsword drawn in his left hand. He also shielded her as men passed, and offered his hand to help her over the bodies of a Lannister man at arms and gold cloak who had slain one another. Men murmured greetings to him as he passed, and he seemed to know them by their names. He stopped for injured men, let go of Elia’s arm to shake the hands of others. 

There had been stories of him, of course. She’d heard most of them from her maids. When the army of the Reach had been crushed, the Mad King had screamed for Stannis Baratheon to be burnt alive. Men of the court had whispered within the Red Keep that Robert had known the violent predilections of his brother, that the Demon of the Trident himself feared the bloodthirstiness of his younger sibling. Serving girls had been heard recounting ghoulish stories of captured Tyrell men being forced to live on the flesh of their own dead, starved of food by the vengeful Baratheon lordling and his garrison. 

Part of her was perhaps not a little disappointed with the aspect of Stannis Baratheon. She had been told stories of a blood maddened demon, a giant of a man like his brother, coming to King’s Landing to glut himself on blood and pillage. What had arrived in King’s Landing was a wire thin and painfully gaunt man, once strongly built but slim, with dark blue eyes. Not at all the monster who ate human flesh and slaughtered men for sport. Just a tall, brutalized, saturnine young man with a strong jaw and a wounded face.

_Half the eligible women of Westeros will be in love with him by the week’s end._ She thought. _Foolish hens._

They stopped once, at the gates of Maegor’s Holdfast. THe skies above King’s Landing had cracked open, roiling with thunder, and her captor paused to strip a great tapestry banner of the Baratheon stag from its pole haft. He draped the heavy cloth around her shoulders as a cloak. She looked up at him, and perhaps there was a question in her expression, for he spoke to her.

“It is raining, my lady, and I would not see you freeze.” 

Ink blue eyes looked down at her. Something shimmered in those eyes, but she was not sure she had not merely imagined it. He was younger than she was, five years younger, but starvation and bloody war had done to him what time had yet to begin to inflict. He looked haggard, all the flesh of his face worn away in a few weeks by trials most men would not see in their entire lifetimes. He blinked, and dark shadows flexed beneath his eyes. 

_You are so tired._ _Would that I could bid you rest._

“Thank you my lord.” She said. 

He nodded. He took her arm gently in his gauntleted hand, and led her out into the rain.

-

The doors of Aegon’s Great Hall had been thrown wide open. The great Targaryen banner, once hung before the broad colonnade that fed into the throne room, had been torn down and burnt. It smoldered before the doors, a great black and red rag of cinders. A company of House Royce knights from the Vale in russet brown cloaks stood before the doors.

“Make way.” Stannis said to them as he and Elia approached.

“Who goes there?” One of the knights retorted, leveling his long spear haft. His companions did likewise.

“Stannis Baratheon of Storm’s End.” Elia’s companion replied. 

The Royce men moved with an almost embarrassing alacrity. 

“Our apologies my lord.” One murmured as Stannis led her past them. He did not reply. Elia looked back at the Royce knights as Stannis led her into the Great Hall. They were whispering together. 

Stannis led her past overturned candelabras and shattered statues of Targaryen monarchs. Someone had dragged down a bust of Rhaegar that had stood before a windowed alcove, and shattered the bust with a hammer. She did not have to guess at who had done it. Rhaegar had truly underestimated Robert Baratheon, both in his capacity for making war, and for his capacity for vengeful rage. Or perhaps he simply had not cared to think of it.

_Ours is the fury indeed._

Beside her, Stannis made a grinding sound with his teeth. She looked at him.

“You should not grind your teeth.” She said.

He looked at her, surprise flickering in his dark eyes.

“It is bad for you.” She risked a smile. He did seem to return it, but it was hard to tell. His wound gave him a slight, but permanent, half smile. 

“My brother is waiting.” He said. “Come.” 

He reached out to take her arm, and unconsciously, she shrank back. He looked at her, questioning.

“I would wish to appear before your brother on my own two feet, if that is possible, my lord.”

Stannis stared hard at her. His brows furrowed, and it was as though a storm gathered around him. _Robert Baratheon is all noise and bluster,_ Rhaegar had once told her, before Harrenhall, _his little brother is the truly furious one._

_I am Elia Martell of Dorne, I am not afraid._

“I will not flee.” She said. She spread her arms. “Where would I go?”

They stood together in silence. Her, looking up at him; him, staring down at her. She shifted beneath his gaze, It was so very much like being stared at by a statue. He did not seem to look _at_ her, as _into_ her, as though he could see what thoughts lurked behind her eyes. 

Finally, he nodded. 

“After you, my lady.” 

_I am Elia Martell of Dorne, I am not afraid._

Aerys Targaryen lay face down before the Iron Throne. The wizened old king lay in a pool of his own blood, pierced once through the abdomen by a sword thrust. His killer stood over him, his face pale and drawn. On the Iron Throne, one massive boot resting on Aerys’ back, lounged Robert Baratheon. The eldest Baratheon was in full armored raiment, his famed warhammer resting across his plated thighs. Jon Arryn, the old man of the Eyrie, skulked behind the throne like a shadow, ready to whisper in Robert’s ear. 

Two men in Lannister cloaks stood before the throne. Elia knew them at once. She’d seen Tywin Lannister in the throne room often enough to know his profile, and his younger brother Kevan followed him like a servant. Grand Maester Pycelle was there as well, cowering behind the Lannister brothers. 

Tywin was speaking to Robert, who appeared utterly disinterested. Even from the doors of the throne room, Elia could see frustration ebbing from the lord of Casterly Rock. She’d seen him like this often enough in the latter days of his tenure as Hand of the King for Aerys. 

She had entered the throne room of her own power, but now found she could not continue on. An awful foreboding had boiled up from within her and wrapped itself around her heart like a coiling serpent. She wavered, slightly, unsteady on her feet. The sight of Robert Baratheon on the Iron Throne, of Aerys butchered, the thought of the giant who had cut his way through forty Dornish spears to reach her chambers, filled her with a wild, animal terror. 

_He will kill me. He will kill my children. He will not stop until every trace of Rhaegar, every memory of him, is burned away._

A hand pressed gently against the center of her back. Stannis Baratheon stood beside her, his right hand splayed across her shoulder blades. 

_You have my protection, my lady, for you and your children._

She began to walk forwards, as if in a horrible dream, forwards, forwards, towards the Iron Throne and Aerys’ bloodied corpse. 

“Stannis!” Robert boomed, waving Tywin Lannister aside. “Got bored holding the gates for me did you?”

Behind Elia, Stannis spoke. “The city is yours Robert.”

The elder Baratheon brother rose to his feet and descended from the Iron Throne, marching towards Elia and Stannis. He kicked Aerys’ corpse out of his way. The body rolled down the steps with a horrid rattling sound. 

“And the Mad King is dead! By the hand of his own King’s Guard!” Robert laughed. “Fitting end for the mad bastard.”

Stannis’ voice was noncommittal. “If it was to be done, it is good it has been done quickly.”

Behind Robert, Tywin Lannister was staring at her, unblinking. His green eyes gleamed with a furious light. 

“May I present the lady Elia Martell.” Stannis said.

Robert started, He seemed genuinely surprised, as though he had not seen her standing beside his brother. His eyes, brighter than those of the younger Baratheon, darted from her to Stannis and back again. She could very nearly feel the famous Baratheon fury rising in him, ebbing from his massive frame as palpable heat.

When Robert spoke, it was through clenched teeth. 

“How is she here?” He said, his voice murderously calm. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, grasping for the warhammer he had left beside the throne. “You were not to go to Maegor’s Holdfast. I ordered you to hold Lion Gate for me.”

“You did.” Stannis agreed. “Though I wondered as to why you did not want me here. Now I know.”

“What do you know, Lord Stannis?” Tywin Lannister’s voice was ice.

“I know Gregor Clegane is dead of a thousand sword blows in the royal apartments, my lord Lannister.” Stannis’ voice rose in volume, thunderous. “I know Amory Lorch was killed raping a servant girl he thought was Rhaegar Targaryen’s daughter.”

The lord of Casterly Rock’s face went very pale. 

_That is the trouble with keeping cruel men in your service, Lord Lannister. They do cruel things._

Stannis glowered up at his brother. The Baratheon’s were almost of a height with each other, but Robert was bigger, broader, and stronger.

Elia felt Stannis push her behind him. His longsword was still in his left hand, and his grip on the blade was firm. The sword gleamed in the dim torchlight of the hall.

“You sent murderers for women and children Robert.” Stannis growled. 

Robert seemed to reel back from his younger brother. “I….”

“Amory Lorch begged for his life Robert.” Stannis advanced on his brother. “He swore you’d ordered it. Take me to King Robert, he said, the king will vouch for me.”

“I didn’t….”

“Men heard him Robert.” Stannis said. “Stormland men, our men, _your_ men. They heard a man swear you ordered the butchery of children!”

“It had to be done!” Robert bellowed. He shoved Stannis, hard, in the chest. Stannis staggered backwards, nearly falling backwards into Elia. “I am king! There can be no pretenders to my throne!”

Stannis stormed back towards his brother. Robert hit him, backhanded, across his face. Blood spattered across the floor.

For a moment, the throne room was very still. Jon Arryn, Elia, and the Lannisters watched Robert and Stannis. Robert and Stannis stared at one another. Robert’s chin jutted out pugnaciously, daring his brother to respond. Stannis’ face was stony, blood trailing down his face from his reopened wounds. 

For a moment, Elia was certain Stannis would strike his brother. The longsword would come up and hew Robert’s head from his shoulders. Robert’s Rebellion would end as it had begun, in madness. 

Robert broke the silence. “I did not want to involve you, Stannis.” He said. His voice was very quiet. 

Stannis said nothing, staring up at his brother.

“As long as a Targaryen lives, there will be men who wish to seat them on the throne.” Robert seemed to sag, to grow weary. “More fire, more blood, and it will never end.”

“Give the daughters to the septas,” Stannis snarled. “The sons to the maesters, or the Night’s Watch if you’re so afraid of them. You cannot begin with the blood of children Robert.”

“As long as there are Targaryens alive, men will rally behind them.” Tywin Lannister said from behind Robert. 

“My children are not Targaryens.” Elia said aloud. Eyes turned to her. It surprised her how strongly her voice rang out. 

“My lady?” Stannis asked.

“Rhaegar set me aside to marry Lyanna Stark. My children are not Targaryens.”

_I am Elia Martell of Dorne. I am not afraid._

If the Sack of King’s Landing was to mark the beginning of Robert’s reign as king, then it was far from auspicious. As the capstone on the end of the Targaryen dynasty that had ruled the Seven Kingdoms for near on three hundred years, it was little better. The city burned for seven days, during which time its population suffered every kind of degradation possible. At dawn on the eighth day, someone belatedly ordered an end to the looting, though the suffering in the city continued for many days after that. 

Robert, _King Robert_ now, had sealed himself away in the throne room with his great lords. There were still Targaryen loyalists abroad in the realm. Robert’s victories at the Trident and King’s Landing might have broken royal power, but armies still stood in the field to oppose him. Rhaella Targaryen, Aery’s queen, had disappeared during the sack, taking with her some loyal knights and her son Viserys. Robert’s rage at that had been incandescent. Willem Darry, an old Riverland knight in the service of House Targaryen as their master of arms, was stripped of all land and titles by royal decree. Hoster Tully swiftly gave over the Darry holdings to his brother Brynden, who men called the Blackfish.   
  


Elia spent the latter days of the sack within Maegor’s Holdfast. No one had objected to her retaining use of the royal apartments, and her presence in the Red Keep at large seemed to create more problems that it could solve. Men largely avoided the Holdfast, and the men in the new king’s company she most feared, the Lannisters, avoided it all together. Someone, and she had a very good idea who it had been, had mounted Amory Lorch and Gregor Clegane’s heads on spikes before the gates of the Holdfast. 

The man she suspected of the deed slept in a small chair outside her chamber door, his sword across his knees. His men patrolled the Red Keep at night. She had become accustomed in those seven days of isolation, watching King’s Landing burn away every last remnant of the Targaryen’s from her balcony, to the soft sound of his footsteps beyond her chamber door, and to the soft sound of his breathing when he slept there. Rhaenys and Aegon were in their own chamber now, cared for by her maids and the few remaining servants who had not fled or been killed in the sack. 

She woke on the morning of the tenth day to find him gone from his normal post at her door, and could not explain the unease it caused her. She took her morning meal, brought to her by one of the little kitchen girls, and still, he was not at her door. She stopped a sentry, a Dornishman, who said he had seen Stannis Baratheon that very morning in the Great Hall. Another man, a Stormland Knight of House Penrose, claimed Stannis was in conference with his brother in the Tower of the Hand. Elia was not comforted by these revelations, and stalked her apartments in a fit of nervous pique. 

She tried to read, but found the books dull. She tried to play cyvasse with herself, but the board had been a gift from Rhaegar on their first anniversary of marriage, and she found it quickly became repellent. In a sudden rush of anger, she threw the board and pieces from her balcony. Cries of alarm rose from below, and something wild rose up within her. She began to laugh. She tore open her closets. A hundred dresses of beautiful silk, embroidered by the finest artisans in the Seven Kingdoms with the Targaryen crest, all gifts from Rhaegar. She threw those from the balcony and marveled as they fell like silver and ruby clouds into the palace gardens. Books on the Targaryen lineages, on magic and prophecy, Rhaegar’s especial favorites from which he had often asked her to read to him. These too were flung from the balcony. A silver encrusted harp, made especially for her erstwhile husband and at which he had made the most beautiful music, was flung into empty space with a giggling cry of triumph. It made an ugly twang as it struck the earth. 

Everything Rhaegar had ever given her, everything he had ever shared with her, went over the balcony. She laughed and laughed, she laughed until her sides ached and her eyes watered. When she was done, she stood gasping in chambers torn entirely apart. Her bed was a ruin, she’d torn it apart with her knife. Her library was destroyed, save for a few books she had brought with her years ago from Dorne. Her daughter’s cat, Balerion, stood on the ruins of her feather bed, blinking at her in that curious way of cats that was once disinterested and wary.

“Don’t worry.” She said to him. “I won’t throw you out too.”

There was a hammering of footsteps outside her door, and she jerked upright, knife in hand. 

Stannis Baratheon threw open her chamber door, six men behind him. 

“What the hell is going on?” He asked.

Elia looked at him. “I did not invite you in, Ser.”

He stopped in his tracks. There was a clattering behind him as two of his men ran into each other. 

“You are throwing things from your chambers into the palace gardens.” He said very slowly.

“Yes,” she agreed. ”I am.” 

To mark his point, she threw a set of silver goblets engraved with the Targaryen emblem over the balcony. She cocked her head to the side, listening to them clatter against the stones. 

He was staring at her as though she had gone mad.

_Perhaps I have._

“Leave us.” He said to the men behind him. 

They obeyed at once, and he shut the door after them. He and Elia faced one another.

“I still have not invited you in.” She said.

“No you haven’t.” He replied.

She folded her arms across her chest. “Are you usually so discourteous to women as to enter their private chambers uninvited? I might not have been decent.”

There was something in his face then, but it vanished as soon as it appeared.

“You are bombarding the palace gardens.” He said. “I thought it prudent to put a stop to it before you injured someone.”

“I didn’t, did I?” She asked.

“No,” he said. “You did not.”

He walked towards her, his hands open. He was out of his armor, clad in dark trousers and a shirt of undyed cloth. The shirt hung loose about his shoulders, his body still so awfully thin. The wound on his face had finally begun to heal, an angry swollen red rather than a bloody gash. His leather sword belt hung at his hip. 

“What is happening, my lady?” He asked. Those darkling blue eyes stared at her.

Beyond her chambers, night was beginning to rise over the Blackwater Bay.

_I must seem mad to him._ She thought. _Elia Martell, abandoned and widowed, mad in her tower._

“Where were you today?” She retorted. “I looked for you, and you were not there.”

He seemed quite taken aback by that.

“You looked for me?”

“You have slept beside my door for a week, ser.” She nodded. “I have grown accustomed to your presence at my chamber door, and I was not pleased to discover you were not there when I awoke.”

For the first time, she saw him smile. It was small, and very brief, but the left side of his thin mouth quirked upwards in a definite smile.

“I am not a hound to wait at your beck and call, my lady.” He said. “My brother called for me, and I was obliged to him today.”

“And what did your brother want?”

“My brother drinks.” He said.

“Your brother drinks too much.”

He did not deny it.

Long shadows extended across the floor of her chamber, flickering shapes cast across the stones by the light of her candles.

“Sit with me, ser.” She said. 

He looked hesitant, but she stepped forwards and took him by the hand. She led him onto the balcony, to a small metal and glass table and swept the ruins of a smashed statuette of a dragon onto the floor.

“My evening meal is coming soon. Will you eat with me?” She asked.

He shifted in his seat. “I have already eaten.”

“Not near enough.” She prodded his arm with her finger. For a moment, she thought he might take offense, but then he ducked his head in boyish bashfulness.

“My maester does not allow me to eat overmuch.” He said. “It can be dangerous for a starved man to eat too much too quickly.”

_A starved man, and he is bashful he cannot eat with me._

Elia reached out and retook his hand. It was hard, rough skinned and strong, but bony.

_The world has not been kind to Stannis Baratheon._

“Do you drink wine?” She asked.

He nodded. “Not much, my lady, but I do.”

“Then we will have wine together.” She decided. He looked at her, and again she received that small, quickly vanishing smile.

He sat with her as she ate, sipping at a goblet of Dornish wine, listening quietly to her talk of Dorne and of her children. He stayed beside her long after a servant came to clear away her plate. They sat together on the balcony, staring out at the Blackwater Bay and the smoldering ruins of the Kingsport. Above them, stars glittered beyond the columns of smoke rising from the city. 

“Thank you.” She said at last, after a long lull in their conversation.

His dark eyes turned to her. “For what, my lady?” 

She smiled wanly at him. “For saving my life, and those of my children.”

He shook his head, and exhaled quietly. “It was unjust of Robert to try to erase you and your children. You do not need to thank me.”

She pecked at a small bowl of grapes. 

“And offering me your protection?” she asked. “Risking your brother’s wrath?”

“It was duty, my lady.”

“Do you always do your duty, Stannis Baratheon?” She asked.

“Always.” His voice became stony.

She reached out and touched the lip of her goblet to his own. Hers had been thrice filled, she noticed, and he was yet on his first. Warm air rippled through her hair and across her skin. The long green vines that grew entwined around the columns of her balcony’s colonnade rustled in the breeze.

“Then I thank you for doing your duty.” She said. “You have been very kind to me, these past days, when very few men would think to be. I am grateful.”

Her voice slurred, ever so slightly, as she spoke. Part of her winced in embarrassment, but Stannis either did not, or pretended not, to notice.

He nodded. “I am glad to have been of service.”

He touched her wine goblet with a finger. She flicked his finger away.

“It is very late, my lady. You should rest.”

She allowed him to take her by the arm and guide her back into her apartments. He led her towards her bed, but she tumbled into the ruined mattress of her own power.

“I will go now, my lady.” He said to her.

“Elia.” She told him. “You must call me Elia.”

There was a pause.

“Yes, Elia.”

She heard the door close behind him, and the sound of him settling down beside her chamber door. He would be there when she awoke, sword across his knees.

She drifted off to sleep


	5. I Speak to You, Plain Soldier

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a while to write. Life and work got in the way of writing.
> 
> Leave reviews!!!

* * *

_As the war ends, make alliances._

  * **Braavosi proverb**



_All things are a matter of perspective. Some may say I have lost a king. I say, I have gained a new one._

  * **Doran Martell, to his bodyguard, Areo Hotah**



Stannis 

Robert summoned him to the Tower of the Hand after near a week of stony, furious, silence. Stannis made the long journey from Maegor’s Holdfast to the Tower alone, just before the tolling of the first bells, in the hour of the ghosts. Robert had sent a servant to guide him, but Stannis knew the way. A wide, open sided, staircase wound round the outer edge of the tower, providing an unobstructed view of King’s Landing and its surrounding port and suburbs. It was not a pretty view. 

There were still fires burning in the lower city. The Street of Silk was inundated with soldiers, engaged in what was rapidly becoming a mass rape of the city’s prostitutes. As their coin ran out, the soldiers had first looted more wealth from the city’s population, and then finally begun to loot the taverns and brothels themselves. Attempts had been made to curtail the pillaging, but with many knights actively participating in the depredations of their levies, it was an impossible task. It would take the withdrawal of most of Robert’s new lords and their bannermen before any sort of normalcy could return to the capitol.

Robert was waiting for him at the tower summit. He wore a heavy cloak over a leather doublet and riding breeches. The royal signet ring glinted on his finger. He wore no crown, for there had not yet been time to forge a new one. Mercifully, Robert did not smell of wine, and appeared sober.

_A surprise, though welcome,_ Stannis thought.

“You took your damn time,” Robert growled.

_No ‘hello, brother mine’, no questions of my health_ , Stannis reflected 

Stannis offered Robert a small bow. “Your Grace.”

Robert sniffed, mollified.

Robert ushered him into the Hand’s chambers. Jon Arryn waited within, the old man groggy eyed and unsteady on his feet. Dark pouches blotched his face beneath his eyes, and it was certain the man had slept very little, if at all. 

“Lord Stannis,” Jon Arryn managed a weak smile. “Your presence at this early hour is appreciated.”

Behind Stannis, Robert made a dismissive noise. 

The chambers of the Hand were sparse. Aerys’ last Hand had been a pyromancer, Rossart, who had no doubt preferred to work in some stygian laboratory rather than within the tower. Arryn had but an ancient table and some few chairs, scrounged or borrowed from elsewhere in the keep, for his office. A map of the Seven Kingdoms was pressed open across the table, held at its corners by books. It was an old map. Even the most cursory examination showed many of the Houses and settlements to be inaccurately placed, or out of date.

_How long did they have to dig to find this relic?_

Jon Arryn was not wearing the pin of the Hand, that ugly little medallion of a clenched silver fist, but it was clear that this was to be his station. Robert had to reward the man who had kept him alive in the early days of his rebellion against the crown, the man who had risked so much for him. 

“Congratulations on your appointment, Lord Arryn,” Stannis said.

The Lord of the Eyrie looked puzzled for a moment, and then offered Stannis a quiet, sheepish, smile. “Ah yes, well. The King and I are but considering it now. Nothing formal as of yet.”

“Nonsense!’ Robert boomed jovially, slapping Stannis hard across the back. “Jon will be my Hand, Stannis. A bloody good one, I think.”

Stannis said nothing. 

_Better Arryn than Tywin Lannister._ He thought. _Better an old man than a man who fans Robert’s worst impulses._

They stood together uncomfortably. Last Stannis had been with his brother, he had taken a blow from Robert, and the bruises of that blow still glimmered green upon his cheek. 

“There is word from Dragonstone,” Arryn said at last. “Rhaella Targaryen is there with her son and a small company of loyal men. I have heard survivors of the Trident are massing in the Stepstone Isles, taking sanctuary and raising new forces amongst the pirates there.”

Stannis pinched his brow. “You cannot be considering invading the Stepstones by land. Those islands cannot be taken by armies. Four wars have proven that. You would need the royal fleet entire to even consider striking at the Stepstones.”

Robert walked around the table to sit beside the old Vale lord. Both men looked at Stannis, expectantly.

“How would you take the Stepstones, Stannis?” Robert asked.

Stannis blinked. 

_How would I? You have never asked for my opinion before, you have never cared to know my mind._

“The King tells me you have a mind for military matters,” Jon Arryn said. “Particularly matters at sea.”

Stannis looked to Robert. _My brother speaks of me?_

Robert must have seen the doubt in Stannis’ eyes. Stannis certainly had made no attempt to hide it. He had grown so accustomed to the casual disregard with which Robert usually chose to treat him that praise, of any kind, seemed to ring hollow in his ears. 

“Give us a moment, Jon.” Robert touched the old man on the elbow. Arryn nodded and stepped from the room, leaving the brothers alone.

“What is this about, Robert?” Stannis asked, when Arryn closed the door behind him. 

“I cannot want my little brother’s opinion?” Robert spread his arms wide in a genial gesture of warm fraternity.

_Robert makes friends of men who despise him. It is his nature to wish to be loved._

“You have never wanted it before.” Stannis was icy in the face of Robert’s warmth. 

He saw Robert wince. He had not meant to be cutting, nor had he intended to wound Robert, but it was best they dealt with each other openly.

“No, I haven’t,” Robert conceded. 

“So what do you want?” Stannis asked. “What task do you have for me?”

Robert leaned forward, gesturing for Stannis to take a seat opposite him.

“I never thanked you for Storm’s End.”

“No, you did not.” Stannis ran his hands over the arms of his seat. “You do not have to. It was duty.”

Robert’s eyes seemed to shine. “It was bad eh?”

Stannis nodded slowly. “It was bad.”

Robert tugged at his beard. He had not affected a beard before the rebellion. Now, it seemed so natural as to have always been a feature. Gone was the handsome Baratheon boy, and come now was the man. 

“I know you took Mace Tyrell as a prisoner.” Robert said. 

Stannis nodded. Robert was wincing again.

“I need him.”

“No, Robert.” Stannis jabbed a finger at his brother’s chest. “Do not ask it of me. Do not make me do it.”

Robert sighed. “I need him, Stannis. I need my Lord’s Paramount.”

“He starved me for a year, Robert. He starved Renly.” Stannis’ voice rose.

“Winter is not over.” Robert replied, “The realm needs his grain.”

“He killed my men!” Stannis snarled. 

“He bent the knee!” Robert roared. “I need him! I need the Seven Kingdoms at peace, damn you, and the fat pig gets me my peace!”

Stannis swore violently. He could feel blood pounding in his temples. 

“And his ransom?”

Robert waved a hand. “I can’t release him if you’re demanding blood price, can I?”

Stannis rose to his feet.

“Then you go to Rain House, Robert, and you tell Lady Wylde that the man who killed her husband will go free without cost. You tell her that the man who taught you to hold a sword will not be avenged.”

Robert spat, wetly, onto the stone floor. “I make peace with the Tyrells, I stop thousands of deaths from starvation. I will miss Wylde, but it must be done. You know it must be done.”

“You release him, you make a mockery of me, and you assure any man to bear a sword against you that his treason will be forgiven. You will look weak, Robert.”

“Weak?” Robert’s face flushed an ugly red. “I’ve crushed the Targaryens, won three battles in a single day, conquered the Kingdoms, and you think to call me weak?”

“Men should reap what they sow,” Stannis growled.

“Smallfolk can reap what they sow, not lords.” Robert laughed scornfully. “He’s a Lord Paramount. He’s not a man you can punish.”

Stannis wanted to reply, to spit his fury at his brother, to climb across the table and beat sense into Robert. He wanted to grab him by the collar, drag him to a window, and point out at the smoldering city and its ravaged people.

_Look! Look! Is this how a king behaves?_

_The King._ He thought _. You are speaking to the King._

He clenched his jaw, and sat down. 

_Damn Robert, and damn Mace Tyrell._

Robert seemed to recognize Stannis’ silence as some sort of furious assent. 

‘He’ll give over the land and taxes.” Robert said, in what he no doubt thought was a soothing voice. “That’ll be enough. Thirty thousand dragons is too much, Stannis. By the Seven, when Jon heard, he thought you meant to cripple House Tyrell!”

Stannis said nothing, and Robert groaned.

“You bloody well did, didn’t you.”

Stannis did not laugh, but he unclenched his jaw. It ached, horribly. He felt the left side of his mouth twitch.

Robert rubbed his temples with the palms of his hands. 

“I need these men, Stannis,” he said at last. “I need them if I am going to rule past the end of this winter. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“I am not stupid,” Stannis snapped.

“No...no.” Robert laughed. “No, not stupid. You’ve never been stupid, brother mine.”

He picked up a thin roll of vellum parchment from the table and tossed it over to Stannis.

“Read it,” Robert said. 

Stannis picked it up carefully between forefinger and thumb. The parchment was like stitched spiderwebs, a beautiful wafer thin strip of ivory colored wax paper. It had been sealed with an amber coin of wax, embossed with a sun pierced through with a spear.

Stannis spread the parchment on the table. The missive was not long, nor was it particularly subtle. The wax paper popped and crackled in his hands as he read, and his fists clenched.

“I am going to accept his offer,” Robert said. Stannis’ brother was leaning back in his seat, hands pressed flat on the table top. “We must have peace in all Seven Kingdoms.”

“First, you forgive Mace Tyrell,” Stannis said very slowly, “you sell me off to Dorne?”

Robert frowned. “It is not like that….”

“What is it then Robert? Am I to cuckold Rhaegar Targaryen in his grave, is that it?”

Robert did not manage to suppress a nasty chuckle.

“Do not mock me!” Stannis slammed his hand down on the table. 

Robert straightened, his eyes wide and wrathful.

“Careful, Stannis…,” he growled.

“Damn careful!” Stannis snarled back. “Damn you! Is this because I stopped you killing her and her children?”

Blood was pounding in his ears. His jaw was locked in an agonizing, furious, grimace. His hands opened and closed like vices, white knuckled.

Robert rose slowly. He was choleric, his brows knit together into a dark storm cloud, his eyes flashing. 

“You will do as I command!” he rumbled.

“Take your dead foe’s woman to wife?” Stannis and Robert were near brow to brow over the table. “Take in her children? Go live in shame in Dorne as a glorified goaler for babes and a sickly woman because you fear a challenge?

“Because I need a loyal Dorne, you stubborn bastard,” Robert bellowed. “I need to bind the kingdoms, and I’ll have you dragged kicking and screaming down to Dorne if I have to!”

“You shame me Robert,” Stannis said. “You forgive my prisoner, you marry me to your enemy’s woman. What is next Robert? Will you strip Storm’s End from me? Who will rule Storm’s End instead of me, Robert? Will you give it to Uncle Estermont? Or will one of your toadies hold the Stormlands during Renly’s minority? What new man surpasses your own family in your affections?”

Robert sighed heavily. 

“I asked Estermont if I should give you Storm’s End. I thought perhaps to hold it in stewardship, for my sons,” Robert said. “He told me that if I did not give you Storm’s End, all my lords would rise in revolt.”

_Gods bless these men, for there are no men finer in all the world._

“He is a good man,” Stannis replied. 

“He’s an old goat.” Robert replied. “But he’s right.”

Stannis lowered himself into his seat. He massaged his jaw until it unlocked. Robert did likewise, the fire in his eyes burned out. 

“I will give you Storm’s End,” Robert said. “and the Stormlands. I’m naming you my Master of Ships. You’ll raise a fleet, sail it into the Step Stones, and burn away what fools remain loyal to the dragons. I don’t care how you do it, but you’ll crush them. Willem Darry, that fool Connington if he’s still alive, all of them.”

“I will send you to Dorne,” Robert said. “You’ll take Elia Martell to wife, and you’ll bind the Dornish to us. I've heard about you and that woman Stannis. You, sleeping outside her door every night. Don't speak to me of burdens when you pick up the weight yourself."

Robert slid a small medallion across the table. A sea wave, encircled by a simple ring. Stannis took it. 

"Will you serve?" Robert asked.

The metal was cold in Stannis’ hand. 

“As you wish, Your Grace.” Stannis said.

Elia 

Her servants had come and gone with her evening meal hours ago. and she sat on a long divan in the twilight and drank Arbor wine. Two of the Holdfast’s many stray cats, long haired beauties with gemstone green eyes, prowled the stone balcony. They weaved through the legs of her table and rubbed themselves against the colonnaded pillars.

She could hear the Stormlanders singing in the palace gardens beneath her balcony. Stannis Baratheon’s knights were celebrating something, perhaps King Robert rewarding their liege lord for loyal service. Out in the lower city, the Lannister host had finally worn away the last ounces of wealth amongst the smallfolk, and was preparing for its long march back to the Westerlands. Most of the wealth of King’s Landing would go with it, to fill the overstuffed coffers of the Lion of Casterly Rock. When Tywin Lannister finished his business with the new king, his army would march home, and much of the city’s suffering would end. At the mouth of the Blackwater, Elia could see two dozen great galleys, flying the brown sails of the Royce’s of the Vale. Lord Arryn would be sending his men home to the Vale by sea.

The great lords of Westeros would leave the city, and she would remain behind. Soon, she too would leave. She wondered how Doran would bring her home to Dorne. Her brother had not yet sent for her, though if he had, the raven would surely have been intercepted by Pycelle and brought to King Robert. Some six thousand Dornish soldiers were still in the city, and with his newly sworn bannermen leaving the city, Robert would doubtless want the Dornish gone as soon as possible. 

_I will raise my children in the Water Gardens at Sunspear._

The thought was comforting. The traces of Rhaegar, the silver hair, the purple eyes, would disappear under the warm sun of Dorne, and her children would grow up in the shadow of her brothers. Brave Oberyn, whom many loved and many feared, and wise Doran, with his gardens and his cyvasse. 

Beyond her balcony, the last rays of orange dusk cast glittering lights across the Blackwater. Below her, the Stormlanders had stopped their singing. A single voice, strong and clear, rang out into the night.

_Somewhere beyond the forest and field_

_A young knight mounts his horse_

_He bids goodbye to his lady and takes up a shield_

_He rides away to his lord to fight his wars_

She recognized the song. It was a marcher ballad, one of many, sung on the northern and southern sides of the Dornish marches. In Dorne, it was a love ballad, a joyful song. The Stormland rendition seemed to her sorrowful, forlorn. 

_Forgive me my lady_

_Forgive me and give me your hand_

_For I must go into foreign lands_

_And I’ll not see you again_

She swirled golden wine around her goblet, and watched her two companions chase each other across the stones. The last lights of dusk vanished beyond the horizon, and the Sept of Baelor’s bells in the city below rang out the hour of the dove, the beginning of night. 

There was a knock on her chamber door behind her. She rose. Doubtless, Stannis was down below amongst his men. She had sent her servants away. The flames of her chamber candles flickered and guttered, casting wild shadows. An ill feeling crept up her spine. 

“Who is it?” She called.

“Stannis Baratheon,” came the reply, and the ill spirit abated. 

_He comes to me late._ She thought. _He seeks me out._

The thought had a curious appeal to it, and she found herself brushing her hands over her dress.

“Enter.” She called, and was grateful her voice was clear. She had invited him to drink with her three other times since she had first asked him to share a table with her. Each time, though he had not refused, he had drunk very little. 

She stood as he entered. He seemed to be perennially clad in dark cloth, in greys or sea dark blues. He did not wear a sword tonight, but a long knife hung at his belt. A silvered medallion glinted on his breast. 

“Lady Elia.” He said, bowing his head slightly. There was something in his voice, an imbalance to his humors, but she could not quite place it.

“Elia,” she smiled. “Just Elia.”

She gestured to the balcony, and to the low backed armchair beside her divan. “Sit with me. Will you share my wine tonight?”

He did not respond, but walked across the chamber towards her, out onto the balcony. She had often found him stiff in his appearance, but he was so wooden now, as to almost seem a marionette, propelled forwards by strings.

“Stannis?”

“A message arrived from your brother this morning,” he said. “concerning you. Your brother Doran writes to the king.” 

His jaw was clenched so tightly that his mouth barely opened when he spoke. His eyes were wide, staring into hers, unblinking. 

_He is nervous._ She realized. _Why is he nervous?_

“Will you sit?” She asked. 

He stared at her. Then, finally, ducked his head.

_He is afraid to speak to me._

“Thank you, yes.”

He allowed himself to be guided to the armchair. She sat herself beside him on the divan, brushing flat her silken dress.

“Will you share wine with me?” She asked, and he nodded.

She poured wine into a goblet and slid the silver gently into his hands. He raised the goblet to his lips, and drained it. 

_Stannis does not drink, not like that._

“Stannis.” she reached out for him, and as her hand touched his arm, he seemed to come back to himself.

“I am not considered a friendly man.” He said to her. 

She blinked. “I….”

“I am considered saturnine, hard natured, and foul tempered.” He was looking at her now, his dark blue eyes were fixed on her in a basilisk’s stare. 

“I do not understand.” She said, but he kept speaking. The words poured from him. He spoke softly, but quickly, as though his thoughts raced each other across his tongue like running horses. 

“I am not given to feasting, or to balls, or courtly games.” He mumbled. “I am not a beautiful man, and it is not in my nature to woo or to make a public display of my affection.”

_Oh. Oh!_

“I am, by nature and by experience, a soldier. I am fit for it, and it seems that I have taken to it. I am of good station, for my brother has named me Master of Ships and Lord Paramount of the Stormlands.”

Elia began to laugh. Stannis stared at her, bewildered, furious, still trying to speak. She laughed until tears speckled her eyes and she doubled over, a stitch twisting in her gut. 

_Oh Doran, you clever, clever boy._

Stannis’ expression was thunderous. As she laughed, he shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glaring down at his clenching and unclenching hands. Finally, when he seemed to be unable to take any more, he began to rise from his seat. 

“No, no no,” she reached out for him through her laughter and her watering eyes. “Stay with me.”

“My lady….”

“Elia,” she smiled up at him. “For the last time, call me Elia.”

She pulled his arm, gently, and made space for him beside her on the divan.

“My brother has asked for you to marry me?” She asked, and laughed again as he nodded. He seemed so relieved that the words had been said, he sagged back onto the back rest of the divan.

_He’d fight thirty thousand knights of the Reach without shirking, but is afraid to ask for a woman’s hand._

“Yes he has.” Stannis rubbed a hand across his eyes. “And my brother has accepted.”

She prodded him with her elbow. “Was all that your idea of how to ask a woman to wed you?”

He reddened. “I thought it best to be honest. I am no prince, no fair lordling. I am as I was made to be, a fighting man and a plain soldier. If that is enough for you then I am glad of it.”

She did not speak at once, and he looked at her again with those piercing dark eyes. “If you would not wish it so, I will not force you. I have men in my service who….”

She kissed him. When she pulled away, he leant forwards to follow her, and she laughed again. She saw, to her delight, the left corner of his mouth twist upwards into a faint smile. 

_I have had my fill of princes, of songs, and dances, and courtly love. Better the fearless man who will stand beside me, than the fool prince who flies._


End file.
